Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > 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. Entirely agreed with the whole email. I'll make some further observations wrt bindings: 1) Distributions often don't enable bindings for languages unless a user requests them, or at the very least they're considered low priority (and bindings existing for a language in a project do *not* imply the project is going to be rewritten in that language); 2) There would be no value in distributions building Rust bindings because Rust doesn't really support "system-wide" libraries. It doesn't make sense as far as I can tell to install the bindings right now. I don't even know where Rust bindings should be installed to, I've never seen a package want them installed before. 3) It's not integrated with the Meson build system we're using so I wouldn't have paid any attention to it, at least unless a user requested it; 4) It's in contrib/. > > 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 sam
