Should GNOME Begin Replacing More C Code With Rust?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Should GNOME Begin Replacing More C Code With Rust?

There's talk of potentially using more Rust code within the GNOME desktop environment as opposed to C/Vala code...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Potential-Rust

[efikkan]

No.
We need less bloat, not more.

[CrystalGamma]

We need less bloat, not more.

Why should Rust code be any more bloated than the equivalent C code? If you don't statically link jemalloc in every library, it shouldn't be significantly bigger than a C binary …
Meanwhile, Rust has serious advantages in terms of safety and correctness, mostly owing to its richer type system.

[coastiron]

We need less bloat, not more.

Rust is designed with principle of zero-cost abstraction in mind.

[gQuigs]

+100 to Rust. One of the downsides of GNOME is Vala - It's simply irrelevant outside of GNOME. Why should I master a language only used in GNOME?

Rust has the potential to be used in a lot more places.

[spstarr]

GNOME continues to refuse OOP languages, it's like they've had a hate-on for C++ forever, let's pick yet-another-language thats not OOP...

[bug77]

No.
We need less bloat, not more.

We also need more posters that know what they are posting, but what can you do?

[RahulSundaram]

GNOME continues to refuse OOP languages, it's like they've had a hate-on for C++ forever, let's pick yet-another-language thats not OOP...

GTKMM (C++ bindings for GTK) is used by several GNOME applications including core ones. Your claim doesn't seem justifiable.

[jacob]

In principle it would be a nice idea, it would allow Gnome to benefit from a modern and powerful language yet remain binding-friendly. But it might be a little bit too soon for that, Rust is still very young and moves quite a lot.

[spstarr]

GTKMM (C++ bindings for GTK) is used by several GNOME applications including core ones. Your claim doesn't seem justifiable.

Sure, bindings, but not the core of GNOME, it's always been C.