Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
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Why lie about something so easy to check? Here's the maintainer himself saying that the issue isn't "R4L folks wanting to toss the maintenance headaches over the wall, for someone else to deal with":
I accept that you don't want to be involved with Rust in the kernel, which is
why we offered to maintain the Rust abstraction layer for the DMA coherent
allocator as a separate component (which it would be anyways) ourselves.Which doesn't help me a bit. Every additional bit that the another
language creeps in drastically reduces the maintainability of the kernel
as an integrated project. The only reason Linux managed to survive so
long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language
complely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do
everything I can do to stop this. -
You’ve brought this up in several comments. given the situation, what do you think is the answer to replacing a huge c codebase with rust under the specific conditions of Linux development (open source, overwhelmingly maintained by 9-5 lifers employed by disparate organizations, in use everywhere for everything) when maintainers say they’ll oppose it?
Microsoft made the news a year or so ago announcing a rewrite of some libraries in rust, but conditions and limitations in Redmond are very different than those faced by the kernel team.
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I'm not surprised by this.
The general attitude around R4L is that it's largely unneeded and for every 1 person actively working against the project, there are 10 saying either "waiting and seeing if it works is the right decision" or "if rust is so good they should prove it."
So as a R4L developer you're generally expected by the community to fight an uphill battle with basically no support on your side.
We will likely keep having developers on that project continue to burn out and leave until the entire thing collapses unless the decision is made ahead of time to cancel the project.
Every time I read any news about Rust for Linux I leave generally disappointed by the entire kernel community.
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given the situation, what do you think is the answer to replacing a huge c codebase with rust under the specific conditions of Linux development (open source, overwhelmingly maintained by 9-5 lifers employed by disparate organizations, in use everywhere for everything) when maintainers say they’ll oppose it?
Nobody is trying to replace a huge C codebase.
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Yup. Modern MacOS is only pleasant to use if you have absolutely no preferences on how your computing environment should work and am willing to completely accept the walled garden.
Otherwise, it's a hellscape.
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And, again, prove him wrong, maintain a tree that shows it's workable, and with minimum maintainability concerns. If there truly are minimal maintenance concerns, a separate tree would be quite simple to maintain!
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Okay so if the point of the rust for Linux project isn’t to replace c code with rust then what is the point?
I understand the project maintains a coy line regarding that question but let’s be serious for a second and really consider why r4l is happening.
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For the last time, the decision to include Rust has already been made. The "prove him wrong by developing out-of-tree" has already happened.
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Okay so if the point of the rust for Linux project isn’t to replace c code with rust then what is the point?
The purpose is to allow new modules to be written in Rust, not to replace C code. Why are you acting like you don't know this already?
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Apparently, it hasn't happened. Because nobody else beside R4L is helping it along.
Sorry, but ya'll just have more work to do, is all. Do it, or don't, I don't care. I honestly don't care one iota if Rust ever gets in the kernel, or not. What I do care about is that the Linux kernel remains a stable project.
Take the advice, or don't. Its on you.
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There's no advice to take for working with maintainers who'll abuse their power to stop a project they don't like.
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So why can’t rust modules use the c bindings?
What im building towards is: if r4l isn’t about replacing c code then it doesn’t need to be in the kernel. If its about replacing c code (which it absolutely should be, that’s the whole point of memory safe languages like rust) then r4l people need to have a clear process and understanding of how they expect to accomplish that goal and be open about it.
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And these social media outbursts aren't accomplishing what they think they're accomplishing.
I'm extremely technical, but not actively into Linux. These posts have driven me away from Linux in an extremely hard way - anyone with opinions like the Kernel team simply don't deserve support, and Linus is clearly past his prime and making bad decisions. This has shown me that Linux is going to (likely already has) slowly stop improving due to its explicitly anti-progress leadership. Until a fork with good leaders manages to take a real market share, the OS will stagnate.
I'm sure this is a minority opinion, but to claim that the social media blitz hasn't had its intended effect is objectively false. Fuck the kernel team.
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So why can’t rust modules use the c bindings?
They can, if wrappers are written. These wrappers were blocked by a maintainer.
What im building towards is: if r4l isn’t about replacing c code then it doesn’t need to be in the kernel.
Why? It needs to be in the kernel for new code to get written in Rust. Why can it only be in the kernel if the goal is to replace existing code?
r4l people need to have a clear process and understanding of how they expect to accomplish that goal and be open about it.
They do!
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Ok, so then just toss in the towel, and make your own kernel, with hookers, blow, and Rust. Sorry.
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Or I can ask Linus to do his job properly and lead on this issue, whether it's for or against R4L.
You seem to be under the impression that I'm somehow involved with R4L or Rust, or that I even use Rust. None of these are true. I'm just seeing an example of bad project management, and people like you that keep lying to justify the maintainers decision.
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I've been using fractional scaling on my laptop with GNOME since I installed it about four years ago. It's a bit heavy on battery usage but it's worked as expected for all this time.
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congratulations
none of that is true
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more so. windows is horrible and macos is distinctly average, it's only selling point is their service/device integration which is the best
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This is where you lose me. I’m not a good programmer or a very smart person, but I have enough experience with c, c++ and rust to know that those wrappers don’t need to be in the kernel if the kernel has c bindings.
If I were writing something in rust I could just include the r4l wrapper for the kernels c bindings and everything would work fine. The wrapper doesn’t need to be in the kernel.
There’s a fundamental disconnect here. When people speaking about r4l including official statements from the r4l project say “our plan to add rust, a language intended to address shortcomings of c, to the kernel is only for new code, not a rewrite of existing systems.” I don’t believe them.
Not only do supporters of and contributors to the r4l project make offhanded remarks about how different things would be better if they were written in rust but if they truly believed in the language’s superiority to c then they would be trying to replace existing c code with rust.
Then the whole rust using and supporting world melts down when people oppose adding it into an existing huge c codebase.
Then they all complain that they’re being discriminated against for “nontechnical reasons”, which is becoming a great dog whistle for if you should just disregard someone’s opinion on rust outright.
Perhaps that explains some of why I don’t believe rust people when they flip out over not being allowed to do the thing that no one else is allowed to do either.