Rust in base

[Garance A Drosehn]

On 24 Jan 2020, at 15:02, Ihor Antonov wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> As I was reading this article [1] I started wondering what would it
> take to bring Rust into base?  Examples of Rust code could be kernel
> modules, or userland utilities.
>
> I know that this probably is not going to happen without a real use
> case (FreeBSD book states - do not add extra functionality unless a
> real task can't be completed without it"), but there is a
> bootstrapping problem.

Speaking personally, I am pretty interested rust, although I haven't
had the time to do much with it.

This topic has come up before on other freebsd mailing lists, and
realistically rust is not going to show up as part of the base system
anytime soon.  People need to write compelling applications in rust,
where those applications are valuable enough that *they* (those new
applications) need to be in the base system.

(where "application" could include low-level code such as device drivers)

Right now users who are interested in rust can install it via the ports
tree.  My experience with rust on macOS is that it takes a long time to
compile, so I'd suggest using 'pkg install rust' if you want it on FreeBSD.

Reminder: I am pretty interested in rust as a language, so you don't
need to sell me on the *idea* of rust.  But I would not expect to see
it as part of the base system in less than 18 months.  It would have
to come in as part of a new major-version of FreeBSD, and (IMO) it's
already too late to get it into what will become 13-release.

What you need to do is to get a group of like-minded developers
together, and have that group develop some really compelling
improvements to the FreeBSD base system which are written in rust.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn                =     drosih at rpi.edu
Lead developer at RPI                    also   gad at FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA