- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
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can someone fill me in with a tldr of what’s going on lately? I know there’s some contention in the Linux community about rust, I’ve seen it mentioned here and there, but what’s the actual story with all this.
Not everyone wants Rust in the kernel. Some don’t want it because mixing programming languages increases complexity, while other simply don’t like Rust. Hellwig says he’s the former.
As the DMA maintainer, he said he would block Rust for that reason. So the effort of upstreaming Rust for Linux stalled. There was uproar in the Rust community, and notably, Asahi Linux leader Hector Martin stepped in, complained about the maintainer on social media, calling for him to be removed.
Linus did not like Hector Martin doing this, so he yelled at him on the mailing list. Hector Martin decided to step down from upstreaming work to the kernel because of this. And later he stepped away from Asahi Linux as a whole for various other reasons.
Now Linus is making it clear that he will merge Rust for Linux work whether other Linux maintainers like it or not.
Thanks for the thorough explanation!
I’m ambivalent about Rust, I see it mentioned a lot but I’ve never really dug into it to see why it’s so lauded. Is there any particular reason why the pro-rust community don’t simply fork the Linux kernel to have a “Rust-Nix” ?
Forking is not an easy thing to do. It’s difficult to keep up with the pace of upstream with a project as large as Linux. When Linux makes a breaking change, then the downstream kernel will need to fix things.
Forks do exist. Asahi Linux ships a fork that includes lots of Rust stuff that hasn’t been upstreamed. It would be a significantly worse experience if you didn’t run their kernel fork, if it would even run at all. Notably, Google also uses Rust in the Android kernel. They sponsor the Rust for Linux project.
And in truth, most forks do not matter. Hard forking would certainly allow them to get Rust stuff in faster, but how much does that matter if no one is using the fork and the fork slowly becomes more and more incompatible with upstream Linux?
It’s almost as if Linus previously spoke without knowing jack shit about what had actually happened. No wonder people are losing faith in these idiots.
Linux is going to implode because they have zero level-headed people involved.
They don’t have to be level-headed, they just need to be able to work through issues. Which is happening.
It’s better for people who work together to say what’s on their mind while having respect for each other, than smiling nicely and thinking badly of each other.
