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Linus responds to Hellwig - "the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL... if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG." (lore.kernel.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Theprimeigen covers the drama very effectively and their are some good technical arguments on both sides.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (11 children)

So far, the only good argument I have really seen from the ones opposing the Rust4Linux effort comes down to: adding Rust to a C codebase introduces a lot of complexity that is hard to deal with.

But the argument offers no solution except to give up and not even attempt to address the real issues the kernel struggles with. It’s effectively a form of defeatism when you want to give up and don’t want to let others attempt to do what you don’t see as feasible.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (10 children)

I don't know I think the argument about forcing maintainers to learn Rust is probably true - sure the Rust code might not touch the DMA code, but Linux doesn't have stable APIs so in theory you're supposed to be able to change an API as long as you fix all the drivers that use it.

That now involves fixing Rust drivers, so you're going to need to know Rust.

However I don't think that's a good reason not to do it. In my opinion Linus should just be honest and say that the Rust experiment has been successful, Rust is going to be part of the kernel moving forwards, and you will probably have to get off your arse and learn it.

All this "you won't have to learn Rust" talk is thin reassurance to keep people happy. I don't think anyone really believes it.

Reminds me of when WASM was introduced and everyone was saying "the goal isn't to replace JavaScript" to keep the JavaScript folk happy, despite everyone knowing that that was exactly the goal.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

That now involves fixing Rust drivers, so you’re going to need to know Rust.

I also don’t think the latter follows from the former. You can continue to not know Rust as long as you’re willing to work with those that can. Problems only start if you’re unwilling to collaborate.

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