If it was a good approach, the C folks would have copied around C files instead ...

Brian_K_White · 2025-02-08T02:17:25 1738981045

Everyone knows you could start the crude way today and refactor the duplication later after it proves itself, if you actually wanted to proceed rather than throw fits.

dralley · 2025-02-08T05:19:22 1738991962

You can't just endlessly dump more busywork on Rust developers (including genuinely bad code practices) and expect them to deal with it.

There is zero good reason to duplicate that code and refactor it later.

Brian_K_White · 2025-02-08T05:41:58 1738993318

[flagged]

yazaddaruvala · 2025-02-08T10:05:01 1739009101

Hey I think you’re missing important context and in the meantime getting a bit aggressive. Neither is helpful.

Regarding the context:

> A redundant wrapper is such a trivial mechanical problem to solve or work around,

The DMA maintainer explicitly NAKd a wrapper. He insisted that each Rust driver copy and paste the needed Rust code.

He even explicitly stated the reason was to ensure he did everything possible to keep C the only language in the kernel.

Brian_K_White · 2025-02-08T13:44:55 1739022295

So do it. Paste it in.

And after that driver is in use for a while and a million users all depend on it because it works so good, other developers will all on their own start asking "why are we diing this this stupid way? I think the original argument is no longer valid, or we can see now that it never was valid. We should revisit that."

Or as more rust devs work on more modules that each need some similar redundant boilerplate, a larger number of individual devs who each ask the same "hey, can we please get at least this level of concession to have a shim somewhere we can interface with instead of all this fragile tight coupling?" When that grows to become a respectful request from many, including users, instead of a disrespectful demand from a few, you get a different result.

But that is step 2. The opportunity for step 2 sometimes simply will not exist without first going through a step 1.

You want in? Yes but the terms are shitty. Yeah, so, you don't want in? It's obviously OK with most of the kernel devs if the rust devs decide this is not rewarding and go away. They are not eagerly welcoming to this particular development. And they don't have to be. How welcoming would rust developers be to c developers demanding to rewrite cargo in c? Go work on redox and make it so great it takes over and replaces linux by simply being the better choice while being equally free and at least as well managed and clearly visioned.