Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sun, 12 Jul 2020 12:39:44 -0700 | From | Josh Triplett <> | Subject | Re: Linux kernel in-tree Rust support |
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On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 03:31:51PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Thu, Jul 09, 2020 at 11:41:47AM -0700, Nick Desaulniers wrote: > >... > > but also a larger question of "should we do > > this?" or "how might we place limits on where this can be used?" > >... > > I won't attend, but I do have a topic that should be covered: > > Firefox always depends on recent Rust, which forces distributions to > update Rust in stable releases. > > As an example: > Ubuntu LTS releases upgrade to a new Rust version every 1-2 months. > Ubuntu 16.04 started with Rust 1.7.0 and is now at Rust 1.41.0. > > It would not sound good to me if security updates of distribution > kernels might additionally end up using a different version of the > Rust compiler - the toolchain for the kernel should be stable. > > Would Rust usage in the kernel require distributions to ship > a "Rust for Firefox" and a "Rust for the kernel"?
Rust has hard stability guarantees when upgrading from one stable version to the next. If code compiles with a given stable version of Rust, it'll compile with a newer stable version of Rust. Given that, a stable distribution will just need a single sufficiently up-to-date Rust that meets the minimum version requirements of both Firefox and Linux.
(That would not apply if the kernel used nightly Rust, since nightly-only features are allowed to change before becoming stable; that's one reason why we should use stable Rust, and try to get Firefox to stick to stable Rust.)
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