From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ng0 Subject: Re: the importance of rust-build-system [Fwd: [tor-dev] Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam] Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2017 13:02:25 +0000 Message-ID: <20170402130225.a3selwxrf3f6d74j@abyayala> References: <20170401075841.242czleuqvibqmjf@abyayala> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38924) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cuf9T-0004lw-M9 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 02 Apr 2017 09:02:41 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cuf9P-0000KP-On for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 02 Apr 2017 09:02:39 -0400 Received: from perdizione.investici.org ([94.23.50.208]:29027) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cuf9P-0000Gd-CS for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 02 Apr 2017 09:02:35 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20170401075841.242czleuqvibqmjf@abyayala> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: guix-devel@gnu.org, Danny Milosavljevic Oh sweet damn.... My friends and myself so ignorant of this April Fools annoyance that I would say: Please double check this message if torproject does not have the same opinion on aprils fools as I do. But: the message of tor was merely an opener to my question. I'm still curious in what needs to be done so that I can get people to join on the rust parts of my project ;) ng0 transcribed 4.2K bytes: > tor is seriously considering to switch to rust. I have my own open > bugs / roadmap points which depend on our rust-build-system working. > tor will not switch immediately, but it shows the importance of having a > working rust-build-system. Firefox will switch at some point. > Danny, could you list what's left for completion? Is it just circular > dependencies? I'm about to publish my project page within the next few > days. I hope you don't mind if I list you as a go-to person for getting > involved in upstream (Guix) to fix up the rust-build-system. > If you do mind, please let me know. I will not publish your email > address, I'll rather point to a git commit. > > ----- Forwarded message from Sebastian Hahn ----- > > From: Sebastian Hahn > To: tor-dev@lists.torproject.org > Subject: [tor-dev] Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam > > Hi there tor-dev, > > as an update to those who didn't have the chance to meet with us in > Amsterdam or those who haven't followed the efforts to rely on C less, > here's what happened at the "let's not fight about Go versus Rust, but > talk about how to migrate Tor to a safer language" session and what > happened after. > > Notes from session: > > We didn't fight about Rust or Go or modern C++. Instead, we focused on > identifying goals for migrating Tor to a memory-safe language, and how > to get there. With that frame of reference, Rust emerged as a extremely > strong candidate for the incremental improvement style that we > considered necessary. We were strongly advised to not use cgo, by people > who have used it extensively. > > As there are clearly a lot of unknowns with this endeavor, and a lot > that we will learn/come up against along the way, we feel that Rust is a > compelling option to start with, with the caveat that we will first > experiment, learn from the experience, and then build on what we learn. > > You can also check out the session notes on the wiki (submitted, but not > posted yet).[1] > > The real fun part started after the session. We got together to actually > make a plan for an experiment and to give Rust a serious chance. We > quickly got a few trivial things working like statically linking Rust > into Tor, integrating with the build system to call out to cargo for the > Rust build, and using Tor's allocator from Rust. > > We're planning to write up a blog post summarizing our experiences so > far while hopefully poking the Rust developers to prioritize the missing > features so we can stop using nightly Rust soon (~months, instead of > years). > > We want to have a patch merged into tor soon so you can all play with > your dev setup to help identify any challenges. We want to stress that > this is an optional experiment for now, we would love feedback but > nobody is paid to work on this and nobody is expected to spend more > time than they have sitting around. > > We have committed to reviewing any patch that includes any Rust code to > provide feedback, get experience to develop a style, and actually make > use of this experiment. This means we're not ready to take on big > patches that add lots of tricky stuff quite now, we want to take it slow > and learn from this. > > We would like to do a session at the next dev meeting to give updates on > this effort, but in the meantime, if team members would like to start > learning Rust and helping us identify/implement small and well-isolated > areas to begin migration, or new pieces of functionality that we can > build immediately in Rust, that would be really great. > > So, for a TLDR: > > What has already been done: > - Rust in Tor build > - Putting together environment setup instructions and a (very small) > initial draft for coding standards > - Initial work to identify good candidates for migration (not tightly > interdependent) > > What we think are next steps: > - Define conventions for the API boundary between Rust and C > - Add a non-trivial Rust API and deploy with a flag to optionally use > (to test support with a safe fallback) > - Learn from similar projects > - Add automated tooling for Rust, such as linting and testing > > > Cheers > Alex, Chelsea, Sebastian > > [1]: Will be visible here https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Notes > _______________________________________________ > tor-dev mailing list > tor-dev@lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev > > ----- End forwarded message ----- >