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194 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
194 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
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_This is my response to the [call for 2019 roadmap blog posts][rust2019]
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proposing goals and directions for 2019 and future editions. See also [Read
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Rust][readrust], where I've collected all the #Rust2019 posts._
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2018 was a very busy year for the Rust project. A new edition was released,
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progress on stabilising Rust's asynchronous I/O story was made, a new website
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was launched, and so much more! In 2019 I'd like to see the language and
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wider crates community become more sustainable, address some common gothca's
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that newcomers experience, and promote more platforms/architectures to tier 1
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status.
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## 2018 Retrospective
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Before diving into 2019 goals I think it's worth tracking how the project went
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on my ideas from [last year][rust2018]:
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1. Become a better option for building network daemons and HTTP
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micro-services.
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1. Continue to improve the discoverability and approachability of crates and
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Rust's web presence in general.
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1. Gain wider, more diverse tier-1 platform support (especially on servers).
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1. Start delivering on the prospect of safer system components, with fewer
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security holes.
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### Network Services
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A lot of progress was made on [Futures] async/await in 2018. The keywords were
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reserved in the 2018 edition but are not yet usable on a stable release. [Are
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we async yet?][areweasyncyet] shows there's still some work to do. [Hyper] saw
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more major changes to keep up with the Futures work and added HTTP/2 support!
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### Improve Rust's Web Presence
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The Rust web presence was improved with the release of the new website and
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blog. The rest of the ecosystem remains much the same. Content from crates.io
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is still largely invisible to non-Google search engines such as
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[DuckDuckGo][ddg-results] (my primary web search tool), and Bing. The [Rust
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Cookbook][rust-cookbook] remains in the nursery.
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### Platform Support
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[Tier 1 platform support][platform-support] remains unchanged from last year.
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There were a number Tier 2 additions/promotions.
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### System Components and Increased Safety
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The oxidisation of [librsvg] continued in 2018 to the point where almost all
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the public API is done in terms of Rust. I'm not aware of many other projects
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following this path at the moment:
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<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@federicomena/101383973224691323/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="400"></iframe><script src="https://mastodon.social/embed.js" async="async"></script>
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----
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## Rust 2019
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In 2019 I'd like to see the Rust community focus on three areas:
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1. Sustainable development
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1. Make is easier for newcomers to write fast code / don't surprise people
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1. More portability
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## Sustainable Development
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Recently [Murphy Randle](https://twitter.com/splodingsocks) and [Jared
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Forsyth](https://twitter.com/jaredforsyth) were discussing the [event-stream
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compromise][event-stream] on the Reason Town podcast. Jared commented:
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> The problems of having infrastructure that’s based on unpaid labour that has
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> a high degree of burnout.
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— [Reason Town podcast episiode 13 @ 19:29](https://overcast.fm/+LfcjXelpg/19:29)
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This is a pretty succinct summary of the problem with our industry. Rust hasn't
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shied away from tackling hard problems before and taking on the sustainability
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of open source doesn't feel out of the question. There's evidence that many of
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the folks deeply involved with the Rust project are already feeling the
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pressure and we don't want to lose them to burnout. Such as these posts:
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* [Organizational Debt](https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/post/rust-2019/) by withoutboats
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* [ Thoughts on Rust in 2019](https://words.steveklabnik.com/thoughts-on-rust-in-2019) by Steve Klabnik
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* [Rust in 2019: Focus on sustainability](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2019/01/07/rust-in-2019-focus-on-sustainability/) by Niko Matsakis
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Part of this revolves around culture. The Rust community generally values
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quality, correctness, performance, and treating each other with respect. I
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think it would be possible to make it normal to contribute financially, or
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other means (equipment, education) to Rust language and crate developers (where
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people are in a position to do so). A simple first step might be allowing for a
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donate badge, akin to CI badges to be added to crate meta data and have this
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shown on the Crate page.
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Michael Gattozzi covered some similar thoughts in his,
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[Rust in 2019: The next year and edition](https://mgattozzi.com/rust-in-2019-the-next-year-and-edition/),
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post.
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## Naïve Code Is Fast Code
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People hear that Rust is fast and lean, they try it out converting something
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from a language they already know and are surprised to find that it's slower
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and/or a much larger binary.
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There are
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[many](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/adyd9j/why_is_the_rust_version_of_this_fn_60_slower_than/)
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[many](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/aaood3/go_version_of_program_is_40_quicker_than_rust/)
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[many](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7w3v77/why_is_my_rust_code_100x_slower_than_python/)
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[many](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/aaood3/go_version_of_program_is_40_quicker_than_rust/)
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examples of this in the [Rust Reddit][reddit]. Things that frequently seem to
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trip newcomers up are:
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1. Not compiling with `--release`
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1. Stdio locking
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1. Binary size
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It would be good to apply the [principle of least surprise][pls] here. I think
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the current defaults are inspired by the behaviours expected from C/C++
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developers, Rust's original target audience. However the Rust audience is now
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much wider than that. With that in mind it might worth reevaluating some of
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these things in terms of the current audience. These need not require API
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changes, perhaps they could be `clippy` lints. Perhaps they could be slight
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changes to language. For example, `cargo` currently says:
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> `Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.11s`
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Perhaps a second line could be added that says:
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> `Compile with --release for an optimized build`
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to help guide people.
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## More Tier 1 Platforms
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This one is inherited from last year. I do all my server hosting with [FreeBSD]
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and up until recently used it as my desktop OS as well. It's not uncommon to
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uncover portability bugs or assumptions when using such a platform. Portability
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is type of diversity of software. It makes it stronger and useful to more
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people.
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Rust is already appealing to people because of its portability. I was recently
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talking to a veteran developer at the [Melbourne Rust meetup's hack
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night][meetup] about what got them into Rust. It was the combination of modern
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language features, native binary **and** portability that drew them to Rust.
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To this end I'd like to see more platforms and CPU architectures promoted to
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tier 1 status. Up until recently one thing that made this difficult was the
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lack of hosted CI services with support for anything other than Linux, macOS,
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and Windows. Recently two options have become available that make it possible
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to test on other systems, such as FreeBSD. There is [Cirrus CI] which includes
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a FreeBSD image in their hosted option, as well as the ability to create
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custom images. Secondly there is [sr.ht], a completely open source (but hosted)
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option that supports a variety of Linux distributions, and FreeBSD, with more
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planned.
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[Pietro Albini suggested in his
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post](https://www.pietroalbini.org/blog/rust-2019-wishlist/) that the Rust
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infrastructure team is already planning to start the discussion on CI options.
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I think this would be a perfect opportunity to integrate more platforms into
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the CI infrastructure:
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> One of the biggest one is switching away from Travis CI for the compiler
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> repository. In the past year we had countless issues with them (both small
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> and big), and that's not acceptable when we're paying (a lot) for it. The
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> infra team is already planning to start the discussion on where we should
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> migrate in the coming weeks, and we'll involve the whole community in the
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> discussion when it happens.
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## Conclusion
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After an intense 2018 it sounds like the Rust project needs to focus on making
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the project sustainable over time. I'd love to see some improvements to
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address issues newcomers often experience and push more platforms to tier
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1 status. Rust is still very exciting to me. I can't wait to see what 2019
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brings!
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_For more great #Rust2019 posts check out [readrust.net][readrust]._
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[Cirrus CI]: https://cirrus-ci.org/
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[sr.ht]: https://meta.sr.ht/
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[pls]: http://principles-wiki.net/principles:principle_of_least_surprise
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[event-stream]: https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116
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[reddit]: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/new/
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[Futures]: https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/futures-rs/
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[#Rust2018]: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23Rust2018&src=typd
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[areweasyncyet]: https://areweasyncyet.rs/
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[ddg-results]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acrates.io&t=ffab&ia=web
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[FreeBSD]: https://www.freebsd.org/
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[Hyper]: https://hyper.rs/
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[librsvg]: https://people.gnome.org/~federico/news-2016-10.html#25
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[platform-support]: https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html
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[readrust]: https://readrust.net/rust-2019/
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[rust-cookbook]: https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rust-cookbook/
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[rust2019]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/12/06/call-for-rust-2019-roadmap-blogposts.html
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[rust2018]: /2018/01/goals-directions-rust-2018/
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[meetup]: https://www.meetup.com/Rust-Melbourne/
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