Re: Some rather stupid questions about Rust and FreeBSD

Alan Somers wrote in
 <CAOtMX2iMhHyr_-Npt7wTgF_qLoK09NUD8wz6CB4nxwcYaY81WQ@mail.gmail.com>:
 ...
 |Systems programming IS the problem domain that Rust is uniquely good
 |for.  Nor do we have a solution in search of a problem.  As I've
 |explained elsewhere on this list (but you can 100% be forgiven for
 |overlooking; there've been a lot of posts), I've already encountered
 |many problems within FreeBSD that could've easily been solved by Rust.

Let me be the one who doubts this, please.

 |Being experienced with both C and Rust, but being forced to use the
 |former, feels like a real handicap.  To recap:
 |
 |* I considered writing the fusefs test suite in Rust.  It would've
 |been well-suited.  But I was forced to do it in C++ instead.
 |* I tried to write a prometheus exporter for CTL in Rust.  But when I
 |realized that the API is unstable, I had to abandon using ports, which
 |meant that I had to abandon using Rust, and use C instead.
 |* I had to fix several file-parsing and memory-handling bugs in ctld.
 |Just to help myself understand the code, I rewrote part of it in Rust.
 |The portion that I rewrote took about 5.5x less code and was free of
 |memory-handling bugs.  But I can't finish it, because the src tree
 |currently only allows C and C++.

This sounds to me as if you have a natural relationship with some
programming language.  Congratulations, this makes the most fun.

 |* ALL of the recent security advisories involved memory handling bugs.
 |We obviously can't rewrite all of the affected components overnight,
 |but those SAs should serve as a wake-up call that C is insufficient
 |for developing reliable and secure software.  Any components that we
 |can rewrite will improve the quality of our project.

Here you seem to pamper over to what seems to me realities after
looking in more detail to the list of problems you mentioned.

  ...
 |I've noticed that the most vociferous opposition to using Rust in
 |FreeBSD comes from users like yourself: casual users who do little to
 |no development of FreeBSD.  If you aren't a developer, then what are

This is why i will not post no more, and i already said so, that
i have no voice that is (and this is understandable and even,
well, good), but your above claims seem to contradict reality even.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)