[bena]

You should care that it is usable, but how they use it should not concern you. If someone wants to use the usb driver to interface with a coin motor to build vibrating underwear, then that's none of your business. Your concern is if your driver works to spec and can be interfaced.

So if someone wants to write software in Rust that just uses the DMA driver, that should be fine. Linus is entirely in the right.

[macspoofing]

>You should care that it is usable

Yes. And that involves not completely ignoring an entire universe of consumers of your API, *as a general policy*. This is especially true with modules that may have Rust code as the primary consumer of the API.

I admit, I don't know what not ignoring Rust code by maintainer means in practice, and I agree it shouldn't mean that the C maintainer code-reviews the Rust bindings, or has veto power over the entire Rust module, or that the maintainer vets the architecture or design of the Rust module, or is on the Rust module mailing list. But it also shouldn't be that as a *general policy*, the C maintainer does not take any interest in how the API is consumed by Rust, and worse, pretends Rust doesn't exist.

>So if someone wants to write software in Rust that just uses the DMA driver, that should be fine.

That part is sensible. Did I argue otherwise?

[bena]

I think there's a fundamental disconnect here and I'm not sure if I quite see it.

It seems to me as if you're speaking about a hypothetical scenario where Rust needs something from the interface that isn't required by other languages. And you can't articulate what that might be because you can't think of an example of what that would look like. And also, in this scenario, Rust is the primary user of this driver interface.

But if that's the case, it's getting really close to "if things were different, they'd be different". If that's not the case, then I don't understand your case.

There's nothing wrong with the interface. Rust can use it just fine. It doesn't do anything C code wouldn't. They're not even asking for anything from what I can see. The person who maintains the DMA driver doesn't want Rust _using_ his interface, he's rejecting PRs where Rust code is interfacing with his driver.

The closest analogy I can think of is he wrote a book, but he doesn't want left-handed people to read it.

The API maintainer should only be concerned how the API is consumed in only that it is consumable and doesn't cause unintended side effects. And neither of those should be impacted by the language used to consume the API.

[tremon]

Did I argue otherwise?

You didn't, but Christoph Hellwig did -- which is what started off this whole kerfuffle last week.

[renewedrebecca]

> If someone wants to use the usb driver to interface with a coin motor to build vibrating underwear

starts writing business plan while installing CMake