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by jrpelkonen 874 days ago
I really don’t want to criticize anyone or their hard work, and appreciate both curl and OpenSSL as a long time user. That said, I personally find it disappointing that in 2024 major new modules are being written in C. Especially so given that a) existing Quic modules written in Rust exist, and b) there’s a precedent for including Rust code in Curl.

Of course there are legacy reasons for maintaining existing codebases, but what is it going to take to shift away from using C for greenfield projects?
4 comments
apitman 874 days ago
Not saying you're wrong, but it's worth noting that switching to Rust is not free. Binary sizes, language complexity, and compile times are all significantly larger.
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zinekeller 874 days ago
For something like curl (which is also used in embedded systems: a legally-verified (compliant with ISO and other standards, for better or worse) Rust compiler that targets common microarchitectures is a definite first step. Fortunately, the first half of it exists (Ferrocene, https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/). The second one is harder: there are architectures even GCC does not target (these architectures rely on other compilers like the Small Device C Compiler (or a verified variant) or even a proprietary compiler), and LLVM only compiles to a subset of GCC. Even if there's a GCC Rust (currently being developed fortunately), you are still leaving a lot of architectures.
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jrpelkonen 874 days ago
This is a good point: there are many niche architectures where Rust is not a viable option. But in this specific case, I don’t see these system benefiting from h3/Quic. HOL blocking etc. will rarely, if ever, be a limiting factor for the use cases involved.
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secondcoming 874 days ago
I'm personally disappointed you're aware of this issue and have done nothing about it.
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teunispeters 874 days ago
If rust could support all of C's processors and platforms and produce equivalent sized binaries - especially for embedded ... then it'd be interesting to switch to. (as a start, it also needs a stable and secure ecosystem of tools and libraries)

Right now, it's mostly a special purpose language for a narrow range of platforms.

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