Hi Elijah
On 05/09/2025 04:54, Elijah Newren wrote:
(1) "without advance notice" was already pointed out to be inaccurate
in this thread, including in the exact email you are responding to;
you could argue that there hasn't been _sufficient_ advance notice,
but then there should be more details about what is and isn't
sufficient. Merely repeating this claim which brian just barely
pointed out to you as false almost feels dishonest.
I think there is a difference of understanding of what constitutes
"advanced notice". While it is true that there have been discussions on
the list for a couple of years where people were clearly enthusiastic
about adopting rust those discussions have always petered out after
concerns about portability were raised without us actually adopting
rust. In those discussions there has been no clear conclusion about
whether rust would be mandatory or optional. I think from the point of
view of an outsider who was following the mailing list it has not been
clear exactly where the rust discussion was going. For someone not
following the mailing list but just reading the release notes there has
been no indication that we're thinking of rust mandatory for building
git as opposed to offering rust bindings for our C code.
(2) "pull the rug away" seems hyperbolic. I would have liked some
explanation as to how a transition period is expected to help, and how
the existing transition period has been insufficient.
I'm very unclear what "the existing transition period" has been
> [...] > (4) you suggest that adding Rust as an optional component
should avoid
the problem, yet we've already had Rust as an optional component for
the last three releases, going back to 2.49.0. (libgit-rs and
libgit-sys).
Right but from the point of view of someone trying to build git on a
platform without rust support there is a world of difference between
having some optional bindings for rust external projects to use, and
making rust mandatory to build git.
I would like us to adopt rust but I am concerned about the implications
for platforms without rust and think we should give some notice in the
form a clear announcement in the release notes once we have a concrete
plan. That plan should include a decision on what commitment we can
realistically offer with regard to security updates for platforms
without a rust compiler so maintainers on those platforms have a clear
idea of how long they will be supported.
Thanks
Phillip
