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One Of The Rust Linux Kernel Maintainers Steps Down - Cites "Nontechnical Nonsense" (www.phoronix.com)

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

217 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he's had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.

From Wedon's post on the kernel mailing list:

I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.

...

I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.

Lastly, I'll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 -- and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."

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[–] [email protected] 140 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (11 children)

I understand his experience is hard to match, we all have something in our lives we're that good at

At some point, that mix of experience and ego becomes a significant liability. He's directly hurting the adoption of Rust in the kernel, while the C code he's responsible for is full of problems that would have been impossible if written in safe Rust.

CVE-2024-42304 — crash from undocumented function parameter invariants
CVE-2024-40955 — out of bounds read
CVE-2024-0775 — use-after-free
CVE-2023-2513 — use-after-free
CVE-2023-1252 — use-after-free
CVE-2022-1184 — use-after-free
CVE-2020-14314 — out of bounds read
CVE-2019-19447 — use-after-free
CVE-2018-10879 — use-after-free
CVE-2018-10878 — out of bounds write
CVE-2018-10881 — out of bounds read
CVE-2015-8324 — null pointer dereference
CVE-2014-8086 — race condition
CVE-2011-2493 — call function pointer in uninitialized struct
CVE-2009-0748 — null pointer dereference

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (9 children)

crash from undocumented function parameter invariants

My favourite, as that was the exact point the dev was making in his talk, that the stuff is badly documented and that the function signature would document it perfectly.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

My favorite, as that is the exact point made by anti-rust people.

What kind of type signature would prove the first block of any directory in an ext4 filesystem image isn't a hole?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

What kind of type signature would prove the first block of any directory in an ext4 filesystem image isn’t a hole?

I don't know if the type system proves it's not a hole, but the type system certainly seems to force consumers to contend with the possibility by surfacing the outcomes at the type system level. That's what the Either is doing in the example's return type, is it not?

fn get_or_create_inode(
    &self,
    ino: Ino
) -> Result<Either<ARef<Inode<T>>, inode::New<T>>>

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