> It's that those devs get to dictate which platforms are even capable of making use of the software written in those languages.
Adding other tiers is welcomed. Take a look at the supported platforms (https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.htm...) and see if there's a platform you'd like to target that isn't a tier 3 target at least. There's HaikuOS, PlayStation1 etc. I'm on a Tier 2 platform myself and I'm really happy.
> if it can make all the existing code written in that language suddenly available for the new platform, that platform instantly becomes orders of magnitude more useful and powerful.
I agree with this, but creating a front end that can actually compile all existing code correctly is a massive task. If the compiler is modular enough, you should be able to contribute just a backend, rather than reimplementing a frontend. I'm strongly against only the frontend reimplementation, because it's no longer clear what "valid" Rust code is.
In summary - I completely agree with the importance of targeting niche platforms. I think supporting multiple backends (LLVM now, libgccjit and Cranelift in future) gets us there without fracturing the ecosystem.
> but easier than having to reimplement a whole userland from scratch.
Probably. But once it's reimplemented (https://github.com/uutils/coreutils) I think it's really cool you can run get binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows with one build command.
Adding other tiers is welcomed. Take a look at the supported platforms (https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.htm...) and see if there's a platform you'd like to target that isn't a tier 3 target at least. There's HaikuOS, PlayStation1 etc. I'm on a Tier 2 platform myself and I'm really happy.
If you'd like even more platforms, there's an ongoing project to add a GCC backend to rustc (https://blog.antoyo.xyz/rustc_codegen_gcc-progress-report-20).
> if it can make all the existing code written in that language suddenly available for the new platform, that platform instantly becomes orders of magnitude more useful and powerful.
I agree with this, but creating a front end that can actually compile all existing code correctly is a massive task. If the compiler is modular enough, you should be able to contribute just a backend, rather than reimplementing a frontend. I'm strongly against only the frontend reimplementation, because it's no longer clear what "valid" Rust code is.
In summary - I completely agree with the importance of targeting niche platforms. I think supporting multiple backends (LLVM now, libgccjit and Cranelift in future) gets us there without fracturing the ecosystem.
> but easier than having to reimplement a whole userland from scratch.
Probably. But once it's reimplemented (https://github.com/uutils/coreutils) I think it's really cool you can run get binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows with one build command.