It's ironic that the framing of some parts in the article is that the kernel mindset is arrogance and self-assuredness and that somehow isn't applied to the rust developers approaching an ecosystem that isn't familiar. It reminds me of tourists who visit another country and try to get locals to do things the way they are familiar with as if something is wrong with the locals and their way of life. I generally agree with gkh's response here. It avoids the arrogance in the other way ("why can't these kids roll their own leftpad") and presents a more valid concern, that of the kernel's actual constraints.
The person who is leading this project and making it happen, Miguel Ojeda, is a long-term kernel developer. Whatever your experience might be of other RIIR evangelism, this project initiative is coming from an insider rather than an outsider.
I didn't critique the idea of Rust in linux, I am critiquing the attitude of the rust fellow asking for support of importing generic crates into kernel code and thus adding dependencies (that is, the point of the article).
The article is by Jonathan Corbet, who has been a kernel insider for a very very long time, and is generally a strong proponent of the way Linux does things as a project.
Your example is quite funny and also represents how i would approach the matter of becoming a linux kernel developer.
Even if C is not my primary language of choice, i would definitely try adapt myself to the ecosystem and not the other way around.
You have all the knowledge of other peers, manual, books, all the libraries, the whole ecosystem.. this cant be replaced.
Also there's something else about C nowadays, is the lingua-franca, the latim (or english) of programming languages. We use it to expose api's to others in any other language that want to consume it as a library.
There's something about culture that people often forget in tech.. it's the real backbone of any project that it's on its own feet.. and when you want to enter in a community you will be better of if you learn and adapt yourself into this community culture instead of creating cultural clashes into the community and try to overtake it (be it hostile or not).
People should be aware that this effort will make it possible to create rust-based kernel drivers and that's it. the RIIR folks are delusional and hype fueled and its better if the sane Rust community get away from them or start to get them back into reality as i bet they are not willing to expend 10 or 15 years of their lives rewriting big and complex piece of software for a likely no return as people will tend to keep using the software the have more community and that are stronger.
It's a much better approach for Rust or any other programming language to become research darlings and eventually become the primary ecosystem of a research OS that went well and is the thing that will replace Linux. The language alone wont do it, it must be able to be a contender to UNIX and POSIX, and whatever language that is in such a system will probably be the one that will become the dominant one in such a ecosystem.
Also another good approach is to virtualize the Linux Api like gvisor does is userspace or the fuchsia OS(and even FreeBSD) does in the kernelspace. So that you can create your OS and kernel in the best way you can looking ahead, and have this Linux compat layer where applications dont even need to be aware they are not actually running in Linux.
Yes, i'm sure there's an imaginary opponent downvoting my comment.
Also there's a lot into my comment, and people are not even noticing it in the whole context.
If there's no reason, why people get so upset? just move on if you are not being mentioned, as it will clearly be the case if i'm talking about "imaginary opponents"..
> The one proposing it is a long-time kernel contributor.
I'm not saying anything about people working on it specifically, if you read my comment, there's a clear separation between serious people and the hype crowd (which is not just RIIR, but now also cryptocurrency fellows, etc).. i can't say where the people working on this fits, i don't know them. Don't know from which part of my comment you took that conclusion.
There are quiet, clever, serious people doing the work, like Hoare, Matsakis and the people that are real enginners, i have all the respect for them (and im pretty sure Rust have tons of such a people). To be fair, all languages have all kinds of people but i don't know what happen to some of them that tend to attract a certain type of people more than others, like the feeling a got from Haskell community more often than others (but given the community was much smaller)..
For instance talking about culture, C succeeded exactly because it was a pragmatic language very simple and efficient like their founders to get things done. With this culture, things happened to be done around the language and we have the ecosystem we have today.. it's a great hacker spirit of more humble, hard-working, behind-the-cameras sort of people which i sincerely miss in the days of instagram, tick-tock and tech celebritism.
Anyone who believes that Rust will quickly replace C in the kernel clearly knows very little about Rust or the kernel, and definitely should not be taken as a spokesperson for either.
I suspect that this "RIIR" that you seem to believe is some kind of "movement" is just a random assortment of clueless people posting in random places.
A ruling clique spreads quasi-religious beliefs that boil down to "we're the future!" to prospective followers. The ones who join up, are inspired and push ever intensified (yet even more honest) versions of those beliefs onto others "we must get rid the old thing". In one or two cycles of evolution, their evangelism provokes hostility from the unconverted. Unwilling to confront their own motivations, the rulers ignore how the spirit of their beliefs implicitly sanctioned their adherents misbehavior "technically, no one said they want to destroy the old thing".
A simple pattern that rulers to turn a blind eye to the connection between belief and action.
Ugh yeah, now that you point it out, there was one. To be sure, my internal reaction to that comment was "oh, a troll or a loonie", but maybe they were serious, which is kinda worrying.
