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Comment by androidcode

6 months ago

The blog post has a number of issues, including mixing C and C++. And Android C++ source code is often filled with C-style code, especially the older the code, and is not always that good in several aspects.

As an example, from https://android.googlesource.com/device/generic/trusty/+/c3f...

Many of the files in that commit have a lot of C-style code, yet are classified as C++. C and C++ are very different programming languages, and memory safety is arguably significantly easier to achieve in practice in C++ than in C, yet in the blog post, C++ is blamed for C-style code, and C and C++ are not differentiated.

Compare and contrast with https://android.googlesource.com/device/generic/goldfish/+/d... . That source code file has much more modern C++. Though even then, it contains goto, and modern C++ code reviews would normally not accept goto in my experience. I do not understand what Google Android is doing when its developers are using goto. Could they not have used lambdas in those places where they are using goto? The mixture of std::string_view and goto, modern and yuck, is disconcerting.

On a different topic, how much of the new Rust code is vendored dependencies? Is Fuchsia included?

Maybe the real value for Google Android that Rust holds, is that it mostly prevents C-style code from being written. And Rust does not support goto, and while I think an argument could be made that goto is OK to include in a toolbox, its usage should be very, very, very, very rare. Why does somewhat modern Google Android C++ allow goto?

I am not impressed by Google Android's C++ code quality. Are Google Android developers, independent of language, significantly below average?

C++ does have baggage, cruft and issues. But having strange C++ code (like goto) and also blaming C++ for C-style code, does not help paint an honest and accurate image. And if Google Android's C++ code review process accepts goto willy-nilly, I do not consider Google Android to be at all credible on any subject related to code quality, memory safety and security in any programming language.

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androidcode

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pjmlp  6 months ago

Thing is, from security point of view, if it is part of the ISO C++ PDF one can buy in Geneva, compiles with a C++ compiler in C++ mode, it is C++.

  • androidcode  6 months ago

    That argument can be applied to unsafe Rust as well. There are code reviews, coding standards and other checks for a reason.

    Though, I suppose something like C++ profiles, just for modernization, might make it much easier to enforce and track that modern C++ is used.

    • pjmlp  6 months ago

      The difference is that with Rust one can prevent unsafe in the compiler build settings.

      Or any language with unsafe code blocks, which people keep forgetting also exist, while complaining about Rust, as if there isn't any other memory safe language.

      With C++ you need external tooling to disable C like code, that a large part of the community refuses to adopt.

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