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by iudqnolq 1348 days ago
In general, you seem to be arguing kernel programming shouldn't be nice.

Why wouldn't things being easier lead to better results, all else equal?

1 comments

Because all things are not equal, unfortunately. Per the article:

> As Linus recently put it, “kernel needs trump any Rust needs”. The kernel is simply not an environment which will bend to accommodate a language; it must go the other way around.

If Linus had said "rust can't accommodate the idea kernel needs nead to trump rust needs", I'd buy what you're saying.

That line came from Linus educating a single wrong member of the rust community.

It only shows that person wasn't using rust in a way that accommodated kernel needs, not that it's impossible or even difficult to do so.

What are these "rust needs" that are incompatible with "kernel needs"?

Stuff like faillible memory allocations are being worked and rust doesn't have so many needs by itself.

A single person argued to Linus a broad amount of the kernel's internal API should be painstakingly refactored to be philosophically rust-y. Linus said no way, that's not what we're doing here.

Luckily, that's not what the Rust for Linux project has been doing either.