Thanks for starting this conversation. I'd love to be able to use more Rust in Firefox.
In SpiderMonkey, the main blocker I encounter is interaction with all the nice utility classes we have in C++, in particular templatized ones. Also, for the rest of Gecko, my main blocker was the lack of support for Rust-implemented webidl in m-c, which meant that roughly 50% of the code I would be writing would have been bug-prone adapters. Cheers, David On 10/07/17 12:29, Nicholas Nethercote wrote: > Hi, > > Firefox now has multiple Rust components, and it's on track to get a > bunch more. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation for details. > > I think this is an excellent trend, and I've been thinking about how to > accelerate it. Here's a provocative goal worth considering: "when > writing a new compiled-code component, or majorly rewriting an existing > one, Rust should be considered / preferred / mandated." > > What are the obstacles? Here are some that I've heard. > > - Lack of Rust expertise for both writing and reviewing code. We have > some pockets of expertise, but these need to be expanded greatly. I've > heard that there has been some Rust training in the Paris and Toronto > offices. Would training in other offices (esp. MV and SF, given their > size) be a good idea? What about remoties? > > - ARM/Android is not yet a Tier-1 platform for Rust. See > https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html and > https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/arm-android-to-tier-1/5227 for some > details. > > - Interop with existing components can be difficult. IPDL codegen rust > bindings could be a big help. > > - Compile times are high, especially for optimized builds. > > Anything else? > > Nick > > > _______________________________________________ > firefox-dev mailing list > firefox-...@mozilla.org > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/firefox-dev > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
