WIP: Rust 2018

content/technical/2018/01/rust-2018.md

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+_This is my response to the [call for community blog posts reflecting on
+Rust][rust2018] in 2017 and proposing goals and directions for 2018. See also
+[#Rust2018 on Twitter][#Rust2018]._
+
+2017 saw some great progress in the Rust space. The project had a [clear roadmap for the
+year][rust-roadmap] and followed it quite closely. It was a pleasure to see the
+outcomes of the 2017 survey systematically addressed in the roadmap.
+
+Over the course of the year we saw some software outside of Firefox and developer tools (such
+as [rustfmt], [racer], [rustup]) gain wider use and  make it into OS package archives.
+At the time of writing there are [17 ports dependant on rust in the FreeBSD ports tree][rust-ports], and [20 packages in the Arch Linux package repos][arch-rust] including:
+
+- [bingrep](https://github.com/m4b/bingrep) --- grep for binaries (executables)
+- [pijul](https://pijul.org/) --- distributed version control system
+- [tokei](https://github.com/Aaronepower/tokei) --- count lines of code, quickly
+- [xi-core](https://github.com/google/xi-editor) --- a text editor
+- [librespot](https://github.com/plietar/librespot) --- Open source Spotify client library
+- [exa](https://the.exa.website/) --- a more user friendly replacement for `ls`
+- [fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) --- a more user friendly alternative to `find`
+- [flowgger](https://github.com/jedisct1/flowgger) --- a fast log data collector
+- [ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/) --- a faster alternative to grep and ack
+- [xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv) --- A toolkit for manipulating and extracting data from CSV
+- [alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty) --- A cross-platform, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator
+
+As I spoke about at the [September Melbourne Rust Meetup][rust-talk], I
+think adoption of tools written in Rust, outside the Rust community helps
+increase adoption of the language as whole. It means [packaging systems are
+updated to support Rust][uses-cargo], tools are exposed to more diverse environments,
+and people are more likely to raise bugs or contribute fixes and improvements and maybe
+learn Rust in the process.
+
+We also saw the initial release of Futures and [Tokio] --- the initial answer
+to how Rust will support asynchronous I/O. I think these components will be
+essential in making Rust a viable option for people wanting to build network
+daemons and HTTP micro-services that can compete with the likes of
+[Node.js][node] and [Go]. I found the fact that they were able to be built in a
+way that upholds the, [abstraction without overhead][zero-cost] (zero-cost
+abstractions) goal of Rust to be particularly impressive.
+
+## 2018
+
+Four areas that I would like to see Rust improve on in 2018 are:
+
+1. Become a viable alternative to Go and node for building network daemons and HTTP
+   micro-services.
+1. Continue to improve the discoverability and approacability of crates and
+   Rust's web presence in general.
+1. Gain wider, more diverse tier-1 platform support (especially on servers).
+1. Start delivering on the prospect of safer system components, with fewer
+   security holes.
+
+### Network Services
+
+Stabilise async/await. I feel that a lot of folks turn to Go these days when building network daemons
+and micro services. To me it feels that the primary thing preventing Rust from parity in this space
+is a stable networking, especially HTTP (inluding HTTP2) server.
+
+### Improve Rust's Web Presence
+
+This is in part a continuation of the 2017 goal, [Rust should provide easy
+access to high quality crates][rust-crates] and the, [Improve the
+Approachability of the Design of rust-lang.org and/or
+crates.io](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/06/27/Increasing-Rusts-Reach.html#3-improve-the-approachability-of-the-design-of-rust-langorg-andor-cratesio)
+proposal in the [Increasing Rust's Reach][rust-reach] program.
+
+Having a consistent, approachable, discoverable, and well designed web presence
+makes it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for and adds signals
+of credibility, attention to detail, and production readiness to the project.
+It would be wonderful to see the proposal above picked and completed.
+
+The large amount of rust code that already exists is not particularly visible
+unless you know to look on crates.io or GitHub. Crates and Rust libraries
+should be more discoverable through traditional search engines. [Aside from the
+static documentation no pages on crates.io show up as search results on
+DuckDuckGo][ddg-results]. They do show up in Google but the titles and
+descriptions shown often aren't super useful.
+
+When posting links to crates on Twitter or Slack, there is no rich preview,
+which would help potential visitors know more about the link and what they
+will find there.
+
+<figure>
+  <img src="/images/2018/crate-tweet.png" width="586" alt="Screenshot showing how a crate looks when tweeted." />
+  <figcaption>How a crate looks when [tweeted](https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/936749790553083905).</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img src="/images/2018/npm-tweet.png" width="589" alt="Screenshot showing how an npm package looks when tweeted." />
+  <figcaption>How an npm package looks when [tweeted](https://twitter.com/jaredforsyth/status/949497032087146498).</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+The [Rust Cookbook][rust-cookbook] is an excellent resource, especially for
+those just starting out. It should graduate from the nursery and be made more
+discoverable, perhaps by integrating it with the [categories on
+crates.io][crate-categories].
+
+### Platform Support
+
+Currently there are three [OSes with tier 1 support][platform-support]: Linux,
+macOS, and Windows.  These are the big three at the moment and it's great that
+they're all supported. I would love to see more OSes gain tier 1 support.
+Platform diversity makes Rust a viable option for more projects and can also
+[help find bugs][llvm-linker-bug].
+
+Personally I would like to see [FreeBSD] promoted to tier 1 support. This would
+be difficult at first as CI infrastructure would need to be built, contributors
+would need to learn to address issues that would [break the build on
+FreeBSD][freebsd-nightly-broken], etc. but in the end it make it easier to add
+more platforms in the future and the ecosystem would be more robust for it.
+
+### System Components
+
+- One of Rust strengths is memory safety
+  - Jokes about, "Rewrite it Rust", and the [Rust Evangelism Strike Force][resf] aside there has
+    been a lot of talk about the possibility for Rust to prevent some common causes of vulnerabilites
+    in C and C++ code. It would be nice to see some of this talk turn into action. I'm not talking
+    about rewiting LInux or cURL in Rust but:
+  - Build replacements for high value system components
+    - Replace parts of C libraries
+      - Like librsvg
+    - Make an API compatible version of a C library
+    - Get it to the point where a motivated user could build an Arch, Gentoo
+      system with these components instead of the original to start testing. 
+      Kind of like the way you can run Wayland
+
+This one is perhaps less of a goal for the Rust project and more of one for the Rust
+community. However there are parts of it that relate to the project, such as [improving
+the ability for Rust projects to integrate with existing build systems][rust-bulid-systems].
+
+
+[mgattozzi]: https://mgattozzi.com/rust-wasm
+[resf]: https://twitter.com/rustevangelism
+[arch-rust]: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/rust/
+[rust-ports]: https://www.freshports.org/search.php?stype=depends_all&method=match&query=lang%2Frust&num=100&orderby=category&orderbyupdown=asc&search=Search&format=html&branch=head
+[rust2018]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/01/03/new-years-rust-a-call-for-community-blogposts.html
+[#Rust2018]: https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rust2018?src=hash
+[rust-roadmap]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/02/06/roadmap.html
+[rustfmt]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rustfmt
+[racer]: https://github.com/phildawes/racer
+[rustup]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rustup.rs
+[rust-talk]: /technical/2017/09/rust-tools-talk/
+[Tokio]: https://tokio.rs/
+[node]: https://nodejs.org/
+[Go]: https://golang.org/
+[uses-cargo]: https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2017-04-2017-06.html#A-New-USES-Macro-for-Porting-Cargo-Based-Rust-Applications
+[zero-cost]: http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/11/traits.html
+[rust-build-systems]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/12/21/rust-in-2017.html#rust-should-integrate-easily-into-large-build-systems
+[rust-servers]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/12/21/rust-in-2017.html#rust-should-be-well-equipped-for-writing-robust-servers
+[rust-crates]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/12/21/rust-in-2017.html#rust-should-provide-easy-access-to-high-quality-crates
+[rust-reach]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/06/27/Increasing-Rusts-Reach.html
+[rust-cookbook]: https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rust-cookbook/
+[crate-categories]: https://crates.io/categories
+[ddg-results]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acrates.io&t=ffab&ia=web
+[platform-support]: https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html
+[llvm-linker-bug]: https://twitter.com/wezm/status/931124516054491137
+[freebsd-nightly-broken]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/43427
+[FreeBSD]: https://www.freebsd.org/

content/technical/2018/01/rust-2018.yaml

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+---
+title: Rust 2017
+extra: Reflecting on Rust in 2017 and looking to the year ahead.
+kind: article
+section: technical
+created_at: 2018-01-05 20:54:00.000000000 +11:00
+keywords:
+- rust
+short_url: