Re: ostree oxidation: internal components written in Rust

[Leon Woestenberg <leon sidebranch com>]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 9:56 AM Alex Kiernan via ostree-list
<ostree-list gnome org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 2:03 PM Colin Walters <walters verbum org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 18, 2018, at 1:53 PM, Anton Gerasimov via ostree-list wrote:
> >
> > So: we may need to try to negotiate some sort of timeframe here.
Back to Colin's question:

Rust is no issue (I guess) if you are thinking of the big x86 distro's
and where you want things done quickly and don't care too much about
the exact dependency versions etc.. I would consider that the "happy
path".

The (embedded) distro build tools are more concerned about: Can we
cross-build it across most/all architectures, can we have strict
dependency control based on sources not binaries, is it stable across
most/all architectures.
I have seen "Go" take about three years before it works outside of the
"happy path" scenario that the language started out in. The Yocto
mailing list still shows heavy activity solving Go's dependency
approach. I have the feeling Go is now getting usuable.

I think Rust is lagging by one or two years but I have limited view
outside of the mailing lists where people are trying to make Rust work
https://github.com/meta-rust/meta-rust/issues

So my expectation it might become somewhat usable (again, outside the
"happy path" scenario) in one or two years, given the same amount of
momentum as Go received.

> For us we're actively looking at Rust as a language for use on an
> embedded Arm device (again with Yocto as the build environment) even
> though we have some concerns about the support (both in terms of
> what's tested and support of meta-rust).
>
> A lot of this seems to me to be a problem of critical mass... Rust
> looks like an extremely attractive language in the embedded space but
> right now it looks like a lot of work for little return, but until we
> have more things we want to use that are in Rust, that problem will
> persist.
Same sentiment here.

Cheers,
-- 
Leon