Re: the importance of rust-build-system [Fwd: [tor-dev] Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam]

[ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net>]

ng0 transcribed 4.8K bytes:
> 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.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Notes
and
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Notes/MemorySafeLanguagesandTor

suggest however that it really is *not* a joke as it happened long
before April 1st.
 
> 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 -----
> > 
>