[yjftsjthsd-h]

> for no apparent reason

Here's the list of hardware platforms that OpenBSD supports:

https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

Note that when they say support, they mean that it's fully supported and actually works well, including that OpenBSD is fully self-hosting on that platform (read: "oops, the compiler OOMs on 32-bit" is a no-go).

Now, here's the list of targets that rust supports:

https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/rustc/platform-support.html

Notice that all the OpenBSD targets are tier 3, and it's a strict subset of OpenBSD's platoforms. Even if we ignore everything else - a questionable choice - rust is unsuitable for writing core parts of OpenBSD because it can't actually build for all the systems that OpenBSD supports.

[jcranmer]

The point GP was (probably) trying to make is that OpenBSD's vision of security is at odds with its insistence on C, a notoriously unsafe and insecure language. There's no reason that the replacement language has to be Rust; it could be Nim or Zig or C# or Java or Vala or OpenBSD Custom Memory-Safe Language.

What it takes for OpenBSD to choose to support whichever language it wants to is primarily a commitment to actually spend its resources to support said language. That the OpenBSD targets for Rust are tier 3 is a sign of its unwillingness to consider moving away from C: what it takes to move from tier 3 to tier 2 is a set of maintainers who have a commitment to be responsive to patches, and an automated CI solution.

(Also note that OpenBSD is the largest Unix "stuck" in tier 3 for Rust. Solaris/Illumos, FreeBSD, and NetBSD all manage to have tier 2 builders. Even Fuchsia and Redox have tier 2 support!)

[tedunangst]

I think sometimes people forget the openbsd project was not started with a text editor opening an empty file.

[PrimeMcFly]

> OpenBSD's vision of security is at odds with its insistence on C,

Their idea of security honestly seems very narrowly scoped on fixing a particular set of issues.