
Memory Unsafety in Apple's Operating Systems - reaperhulk
https://langui.sh/2019/07/23/apple-memory-safety/
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lvh
This is great, and pretty damning evidence of traditional, unsafe languages.

Do we have any data on how much of iOS is implemented in unsafe code vs in
macOS? In particular, I want to know if the difference in memory safety ratio
correlates with a language choice ratio. I don’t think sufficient information
to make that determination is public, but I would love to be wrong about that.

(I guess one of the problems with that measurement would be is that it’s hard
to tell if an ObjectiveC file has parts of straight C in it, which you’d
expect more of in system code.)

~~~
kingkilr
As far as we know the entire kernel for both is memory unsafe.

It's not clear to me how much Swift is in use internally for things besides
apps (e.g. is there a future where Window Server is Swift?)

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rurban
You can also compare the valgrind suppression files for the various versions
of darwin, vs Linux glibc known vulnerabilies, mostly memory leaks. Darwin is
just horrible. Even if it just copied Freebsd's libc, it managed to add so
many mistakes with everything they touched. glibc is mostly fine

~~~
rurban
see [https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-
macos](https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos)

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693471
> Yes, of course migration is difficult! Any company doing it will need to
> retrain people, make toolchain changes, and undoubtedly invest in improving
> both the compiler and language itself. If only there was some enormous
> company with vast resources and a commitment to privacy and security who
> could embark on a journey like this…

You mean Swift?

