alt Hacker NewsLet me guess... The bug is in C code?
(reading TFA)
net/ipv4/af_inet.c
net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c
And moreover it's a security issue found by LLMs.
It's kinda a really bad time to be a C-loving, AI-hating, fanboi.
Do we at least entertain the idea that some rewrites of some things in safer languages could be a desirable goal? (not saying it's practical or not: just asking if C lovers are willing to reflect a bit on what's going on atm).
Replies
secondcoming • yesterday at 11:32 PM
Get rewriting, soldier!
TZubiri • yesterday at 11:37 PM
maybe
i’d focus on writing new stuff with rust though, not rewriting old stuff
and time will tell whether it actually reduces bugs or just change the failure modes to something else
also C will always be there in some way or the other, at least in conventions and syntax
With only 0.5% of Rust code in the kernel, this does not say much. The binder thing seems to be the only real Rust component so far, and it also mysteriously already had a race condition despite it being impossible to do such mistakes in Rust.