Re: The Case for Rust (in any system)

On 06-09-24 21:46, Brooks Davis wrote:


> While bugs you can't write because the language doesn't let you are the
> best bugs, we should also be looking at deterministic ways to improve
> our C and C++ memory safety.  In my biased opinion, our most realistic
> option for making major advances here is the adoption of CHERI[2].
> We've got Arm's Morello prototype today and we expect commercially
> available RISC-V silicon in the next year or so.  At this point I hope
> to merge CHERI support from CheriBSD[3] in time for FreeBSD 16 (subject to
> standardization timelines, funding, and hardware availability).  In the
> meantime, we should be looking at orthoginal techniques such as enabling
> default initialization of stack allocations.

CHERI does indeed look interesting. Another thumbs up there for David 
Chisnall, I really hope that his endeavours take off.

ARM's MTE uses similar techniques (though less pervasive and less secure 
as I understand it).

JF Bastien published a paper based on default initialization 
https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2022/p2723r0.html
I think that is a great idea.

A+
Paul