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by Panzerschrek 6 days ago
The main problem of Fil-C or similar solutions is not that they provide absolute safety with no escape hatch (unlike languages with unsafe keyword). The problem is that they provide an excuse to keep using terrible programming languages like C and C++ allowing memory safety issues in the first place.
2 comments
inigyou 6 days ago
But if you're using Fil-C is it still a memory safety issue or just an ordinary crash bug?
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pjmlp 6 days ago
Yeah, but who's going to rewrite LLVM in Rust, which rustc relies on?

Yes there is Cranelift, and?

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Panzerschrek 6 days ago
In case of such projects like LLVM C++ usage can be tolerated. But for new code or smaller codebases a better alternative should be considered.

Also Fil-C can't be used for LLVM anyway, since performance and memory consumption overhead is way too much. Nobody wants clang/rustc working 4x slower and consuming 2x more memory.

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pjmlp 6 days ago
Yeah, unfortunately there are plenty of such projects, without alternatives.

GCC, GNOME, KDE, Linux kernel, BSD variants, CUDA, RocM, OpenCL Vulkan, DirectX, Metal, GNM(X), OpenMP, OpenACC, NVN,....

Hence why somehow fixing C and C++ is also quite relevant for the upcoming decades, assuming humans still matter on the planet.

Now it is going to be ARM MTE, SPARC ADI, CHERI, Fil-C, or WG14 and WG21 actually getting their act together, remains to be seen, as it is subject to governments and industry pressure, and we not destroying civilisation.

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Panzerschrek 6 days ago
> GCC

Isn't needed if we rewriting anything in Rust anyway.

> GNOME, KDE

They aren't that huge. Huge is the overall codebase of applications using them. It's relatively easy to create a native Rust GUI framework and rewrite applications needed such a framework one by one.

> Linux kernel

It's a good opportunity to rewrite it. Not only because modern languages like Rust are better than C, but because such a rewrite allows getting rid of old stuff present only for historical reasons.

> BSD variants

Aren't needed if we writing a new kernel from scratch.

> CUDA, OpenCL

Not a huge problem. There are dozens of GPU-related languages. Adding one more isn't that problematic.

> Vulkan, DirectX, Metal

They are language-agnostic (but still unsafe). One can create an implementation in something other than C.

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pjmlp 6 days ago
The fallacy starts that Rust depends on GCC and LLVM, and someone will keep adding code to them.

Likewise with all the industry standards based on C and C++.

Looking forward to see how COSMIC ever manages to gain adoption beyond System 76 computers.

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