Re: [edk2-devel] Proposal to move Rust std work to a Repository under Tianocore

["Pedro Falcato" <pedro.falcato@gmail.com>]

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Right. I had no idea that you were going to go for std support in your
project. This makes me like your project much less. I thought you were
going to go the way of linux, where they do not use std but rather custom
stuff that fits well with the rest of the kernel. I very much do not think
that a whole standard library (especially a full-fledged one like Rust's)
is useful, or fits well, or is even usable in this context; this is why no
one that is working on firmware or a kernel uses your userspace's libc, C++
standard library or rust's std. I can see how std can be useful when trying
to run standalone EFI apps, but the security critical code is the rest of
EFI, which needs to fit the EDK2 system and sometimes run in awkward
contexts like runtime services, SMM, etc.

Is there no chance to upstream build integration and some basic wrappers
around existing code?

On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 6:39 PM Ayush Singh <ayushdevel1325@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Pedro. Bare Rust already works in UEFI. In fact, UEFI support for
> no_std Rust has been present upstream for a few years. However, as you
> might be able to guess, bare Rust without any allocation and use of
> external crates simply did not provide enough benefits over C to migrate
> older projects to it. Additionally, without std, it's difficult to do
> enough significant testing to generate enough confidence in a new language
> like this.
>
> Also to clarify, using Rust std in an application does not mean the whole
> std will be bundled with the application. Only the parts of std that are
> actually used by the application will be bundled in the final binary.
>
> You can find more information about what is already present in upstream
> Rust for UEFI here:
> https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/unknown-uefi.html
>
> There is also some talks about promoting UEFI target to Tier-2, and having
> an std implementation will certainly help with that.
>
>
> Yours Sincerely.
>
> Ayush Singh
>
>
> On 8/1/22 22:56, Pedro Falcato wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> May I suggest you just port the bare rust language (no crates, no std) to
> EDK2? It seems far more plausible to expect people to use a cut down
> version with some bindings to the rest of the project instead of hoping
> people just use the whole of rust, a lot of which isnt proven (or even used
> AFAIK) in bare metal projects. Porting just the bare minimum is way more
> realistic in my opinion.
>
> Thanks,
> Pedro
>
> On Mon, 1 Aug 2022, 18:02 Ayush Singh, <ayushdevel1325@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone. In the previous email thread [1], I discussed the
>> proposal to move Rust std work to edk2-staging and mentioned its
>> potential problems. After some discussion with mentors, we arrived at
>> the conclusion to have a rustlang [2] fork under the Tianocore
>> organization, and move all the std related work there. We can then open
>> a PR upstream from there, while allowing PRs in this repository. This
>> should help provide an easier and streamlined way for people to
>> experiment and work on this project while it is in the process of being
>> merged upstream.
>>
>>
>> For a status update about tests:
>>
>> - passed: 12797
>>
>> - failed: 40
>>
>> - ignored: 375
>>
>>
>> Yours Sincerely,
>>
>> Ayush Singh
>>
>>
>> [1]: https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/91989
>>
>> [2]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>>

-- 
Pedro Falcato

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