On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 11:53:06AM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > Hello! > > > librsvg has rewritten substantial fractions of its code upstream in > > Rust. It won't be the last such library or package to do so. > > Well, I wouldn't bet on that. I know that a lot of people have the > feeling that rewriting everything in Rust will solve all problems > in software we have nowadays but that's not the case. Rewriting large > projects is associated with a high cost and not many companies are > willing to pay for that. Also, there have already been several > vulnerabilities in Rust and Cargo as well, so the safety is not > really an argument.
I really don't feel the need to recreate extensive language arguments here. I think it safe to say that Rust's small handful of documented issues in the standard library pales in comparison to the history of whole classes of bugs in C programs. But the point of this thread is not advocacy, it's simple observation. I'm not suggesting the world will get rewritten in Rust overnight. It seems a rather safe bet, however, that a non-zero number of additional Rust libraries and binaries will show up in the core ecosystem. > > Running old versions of a library is not a viable long-term strategy. > > Attempting to find alternatives written in C is not a viable long-term > > strategy either; that's running in the wrong direction. Ultimately, the > > new version will need uploading to Debian, and an architecture that > > wants to run a full desktop, or for that matter a server or embedded > > environment, will need to have LLVM support and Rust support. > > I know that. That's why I also criticized the upstream developer, > of librsvg, who happens to be a colleague of mine at SUSE, who was responsible > for that change. For attempting to improve beyond C? Hardly a criticism. > Will be interesting to see what will happen in the future > when the rustified version of librsvg will try move into the enterprise > distributions. Seems far less likely to encounter issues, given that enterprise distributions target mainstream architectures only. > > I think it's reasonable for the *first* such library being uploaded to > > wait a little while to coordinate, which it did. > > It didn't even wait for Rust to stabilize on the architectures it was > recently bootstrapped for. There was no guarantee the Rust compiler will > work on arm32 or mips32 in the foreseeable future. Define "stabilize". And in particular, how were people to know this from https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/11/msg00000.html ? > Given the fact that Rust upstream is always introducing a significant number > of changes with each release, there is quite a chance of regressions of > the compiler on these architectures. This does not relate. The language has active development, like any package that isn't dead upstream. What makes it any *more* likely to have regressions? What makes it likely to have regressions is a lack of direct support for such architectures upstream. As a random example: where are the bots that run testsuites on other architectures for PRs? > > I don't, however, think it's reasonable to wait indefinitely. > > No one was saying that. But I think it's more reasonable to wait for > the Rust compiler to stabilize Rust is stable. Thank you for your contributions helping it work on more architectures, but "does not have first-tier support for every architecture ever" is not a component of "stabilize". > There is still no Rust-stable branch in sight which is > most certainly a requirement for Rust to be part of enterprise distributions. This has certainly been discussed upstream, but in general, it's not obvious what this would gain over simply taking any stable release of Rust and packaging it. > I know the QA processes associated for SLES to update packages in a release > version and I could imagine that it's not anything less involved for > RHEL or other enterprise distributions. It seems that Rust upstream has > not had any of the enterprise and long-term support distributions in > mind yet. They seem to assume that distributions can just always use the > latest upstream versions. No, we assume that distributions can package Rust alongside Rust software and that the packaged software will work with the packaged Rust. There's no need to use "the latest upstream version"; you only need to update to a new upstream version of Rust if you update to a new upstream version of software written in Rust. > > If even more coordination had taken place than what already did, > > what would have been the expected outcome? > > A Rust compiler that doesn't regress every six weeks, maybe? It's not reasonable to block the introduction of software written in Rust on some developer (not yet identified) taking the time to contribute the necessary infrastructure upstream to continually test multiple additional uncommon architectures. And that's what would be necessary. > > precisely because if non-release architectures need to > > keep an outdated version while working on porting efforts, they'll > > automatically do so, and that shouldn't impede those architectures too > > much as long as other packages don't start depending specifically on > > functionality from the new librsvg. (And if packages do start having > > such dependencies, they'll get held back too.) > > Debian Ports doesn't support the cruft mechanism that DAK supports. We're > lucky that the librsvg-common package is of arch any, otherwise librsvg > would already been uninstallable in Debian Ports. So, this is just > pure luck. Please don't make such statements when you're not aware of > the differences between Debian's release and ports architectures. Good to know, and sorry to hear that. Another reason why it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to focus on release architectures, and treat others as "best effort". > > Approaching the problem from a different angle: what help is needed > > getting a viable LLVM and Rust development environment for more > > architectures? > > There are open reviews for LLVM, for example: > > > https://reviews.llvm.org/D50784 > > https://reviews.llvm.org/D50856 > > https://reviews.llvm.org/D50858 > > And a bug in Rust: > > > https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/49773 Thanks for calling attention to these. Hopefully appropriate folks with both port and LLVM expertise will be able to look at them. > > Speaking with an upstream Rust hat on in addition to a > > Debian hat: what could Rust do to make life easier for porters? > > Please provide an actual stable version of the Rust compiler that > is supported in the long term and can be shipped by enterprise > distributions. There's a stable version of the compiler every six weeks. Pick one and ship it. If, instead of "stable", you mean "supported on other architectures", that's going to require upstream infrastructure to *test* those architectures on a regular basis. > > And what could Debian's *considerable* expertise in porting do to make that > > more > > sustainable upstream? (As an example, it might help if upstream Rust > > folks had access to machines for more architectures, though that's a > > side issue for having an LLVM port in the first place.) > > Debian Ports has worked closely with QEMU upstream to help make significant > improvements to that emulator. So, in most cases, Rust developers can just > use QEMU for the first porting efforts. But there are also porterboxes > available > from gcc to which we from Debian Ports also have provided hardware, for > example: I'm more suggesting that if people want to see an architecture better supported, it needs to end up in at least tier 2 on https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html .
