Comment by steveklabnik
10 months ago
Let's say that we both agree that Linus should be making clear statements here, and that lack of clarity is causing lots of problems.
That one bug happened one time does not mean that the promise is broken. To be clear, it's a bad thing, but acting like this means the entire working rules are a lie is overreacting.
> That one bug happened one time does not mean that the promise is broken.
It's not been once. Don't you understand that is why things have gotten to this point? Are you aware of how the developers have been using Coccinelle in their workflows and how many subsystems support it? And are you aware that the Coccinelle for Rust implementation is constantly in a dire state? Have some empathy for the folks who have had their workflows broken and burdens increased because of it.
> Let's say that we both agree that Linus should be making clear statements here, and that lack of clarity is causing lots of problems.
Clarity will be communicated by the result of this patch set.
> Have some empathy for the folks who have had their workflows broken and burdens increased because of it.
Okay. Will you show empathy to the R4L folks constantly having sand poured into their fuel tank by kernel maintainers?
> Will you show empathy to the R4L folks constantly having sand poured into their fuel tank by kernel maintainers?
But the thing is, the kernel isn't "the R4L folks"' "fuel tank", is it? Doesn't the very name you use, "kernel maintainers", tell you that that's their "fuel tank"? Seems the people pouring sand into that are "the R4L folks".
Kernel maintainers aren't doing anything to R4L folks except where their activities intersect with the upstream linux kernel. Your analogy isn't right.
R4L folks thought that preliminary R4L infrastructure being accepted upstream meant that all the changes they needed in the future would be accepted easily as well, and now that there are concerns from subsystem maintainers, a few R4L folks are playing the dramatic victim card.
From what I understand, market pressures are causing R4L folks to panic. If they can't get more R4L stuff upstream, people can't ship Rust drivers, and R4L development falls apart.
That's not kernel maintainers' problem, though. They have a job to do to, and it has nothing to do with Rust kernel drivers except as far as they're persuaded Rust drivers help the linux community overall and will be maintainable without unacceptably disrupting their tool-assisted workflows. Several of them have concluded, so far, that R4L PRs will unacceptably disrupt existing workflows.
That's where R4L has failed. They've failed to persuade subsystem maintainers that some added headaches/retooling/efficiency-loss is worth it to enable Rust drivers. Which drivers, and who wants to use them? Perhaps the potential downstream users of those drivers can talk with kernel devs, persuade them it's really valuable, and figure out a plan?
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No, because they are the once choosing to add this complexity to an existing project because of their own interests/ideals.
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