linus torvalds

4 Articles

The rust language logo being branded onto a microcontroller housing

Will 2020 Be The Year Of Rust In The Linux Kernel?

July 15, 2020 by 55 Comments

One problem with modern programming languages is the reach their overly enthusiastic early adopters have nowadays thanks to the internet. As a result, everyone else’s first encounter with them are oftentimes some crude, fanboyish endeavors to rewrite every single established software project in that shiny new language — just because — which may leave an off-putting taste behind. However, Rust certainly seems to have outgrown this state by now, and with its rising popularity within the general developer population, it’s safe to say it will stick around. Will it fully replace C one day? Probably not, but there’s a big chance for coexistence, and [Nick Desaulniers] got the ball rolling for that within the Linux kernel.

Now, before you storm off pledging your allegiance to C by finding a new operating system: nothing is happening yet. [Nick] simply tested the waters for a possible future of Rust within the Linux kernel code base, which is something he’s planning to bring up for discussion in this year’s Linux Plumbers Conference — the annual kernel developer gathering. The interesting part is [Linus Torvalds]’s respone on the LKML thread, which leaves everyone hoping for a hearty signature Rust rant akin to his C++ one disappointed. Instead, his main concern is that a soft and optional introduction of the support in the build system would leave possible bugs hidden, and therefore should be automatically enabled if a Rust compiler is present — essentially implying that he seems otherwise on board.

We’ll see what comes of it, but with Rust language team lead [Josh Triplett] stating that enhancements benefiting and advancing a kernel integration are certainly imaginable for Rust itself, we might see interesting collaborations coming up in the near future. If you don’t want to wait for that and use Rust already today in a user-land driver, check out this 35c3 talk. And if that doesn’t go far enough for you, here’s a whole (non-Linux) kernel written in Rust.

Ask Hackaday: Are 80 Characters Per Line Still Reasonable In 2020?

June 18, 2020 by 186 Comments

Software developers won’t ever run out of subjects to argue and fight about. Some of them can be fundamental to a project — like choice of language or the programming paradigm to begin with. Others seem more of a personal preference at first, but can end up equally fundamental on a bigger scale — like which character to choose for indentation, where to place the curly braces, or how to handle line breaks. Latest when there’s more than one developer collaborating, it’s time to find a common agreement in form of a coding style guide, which might of course require a bit of compromise.

Regardless of taste, the worst decision is having no decision, and even if you don’t agree with a specific detail, it’s usually best to make peace with it for the benefit of uniformly formatted code. In a professional environment, a style guide was ideally worked out collaboratively inside or between teams, and input and opinions of everyone involved were taken into consideration — and if your company doesn’t have one to begin with, the best step to take is probably one towards the exit.

The situation can get a bit more complex in open source projects though, depending on the structure and size of a project. If no official style guide exists, the graceful thing to do is to simply adopt the code base’s current style when contributing to it. But larger projects that are accustomed to a multitude of random contributors will typically have one defined, which was either worked out by the core developers, or declared by its benevolent dictator for life.

In case of the Linux kernel, that’s of course [Linus Torvalds], who has recently shaken up the community with a mailing list response declaring an overly common, often even unwritten rule of code formatting as essentially obsolete: the 80-character line limitation. Considering the notoriety of his rants and crudeness, his response, which was initiated by a line break change in the submitted patch, seems downright diplomatic this time.

[Linus]’ reasoning against a continuing enforcement of 80-char line limits is primarly the fact that screens are simply big enough today to comfortably fit longer lines, even with multiple terminals (or windows) next to each other. As he puts it, the only reason to stick to the limitation is using an actual VT100, which won’t serve much use in kernel development anyway.

Allowing longer lines on the other hand would encourage the use of more verbose variable names and whitespace, which in turn would actually increase readability. Of course, all to a certain extent, and [Linus] obviously doesn’t call for abolishing line breaks altogether. But he has a point; does it really make sense to stick to a decades old, nowadays rather arbitrary-seeming limitation in 2020?

Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: Are 80 Characters Per Line Still Reasonable In 2020?” →

Linux, Without The Git Factor

September 17, 2018 by 82 Comments

Linux started as a student project in the 1990s, the creation of Linus Torvalds. He has attained celebrity status while steering his creation through the decades, but along the way he has also attracted a different reputation within the Linux and software community. He is famous for his outbursts and rants, some of which become rather personal, and it is not difficult at all to find kernel developers or would-be kernel developers who have turned their backs on the project as a result.

It’s very refreshing indeed then to read an update from [Linus] as part of his regular communications, in which he admits that he has an issue, and says that he is taking the time to seek help for it. There is an accompanying update to the kernel maintenance code of conduct, which suggests that this is likely to mark a sea-change in that environment, as well as we hope salvage that aspect of [Linus]’ reputation.

“My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.”

The Hackaday community has a much greater than average proportion of Linux users among its readership. Even those readers who use a desktop OS with BSD, Windows, or other kernels will almost certainly have a Linux kernel somewhere, whether it’s in their phone, their set-top-box, their children’s toys, or even their domestic appliances. And of course a large swath of the Internet runs on Linux. It is in the best interest of us all that we continually attract and retain brilliant people to contribute to the effort put into developing and maintaining the Linux kernel.

Without wishing to lionise [Linus] above the many others whose work has also contributed to Linux and its success, his contribution to our community has been beyond measure and it has been uncomfortable to see his other side. It’s a step in the right direction to apologize for personal attacks and behavior that drives a wedge into the kernel developer community, and seek to change that behavior. We’d urge others to follow his example, we’re sure every grouping has at times had its personality problems, and it’s never too late to enact some repairs.

While Linus steps away to work on his self improvement, veteran kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman will take the reigns among the kernel maintainers.

History Of Git

May 11, 2017 by 89 Comments

Git is one of those tools that is so simple to use, that you often don’t learn a lot of nuance to it. You wind up cloning a repository from the Internet and that’s about it. If you make changes, maybe you track them and if you are really polite you might create a pull request to give back to the project. But there’s a lot more you can do. For example, did you know that Git can track collaborative Word documents? Or manage your startup files across multiple Linux boxes?

Git belongs to a family of software products that do revision (or version) control. The idea is that you can develop software (for example) and keep track of each revision. Good systems have provisions for allowing multiple people to work on a project at one time. There is also usually some way to split a project into different parts. For example, you might split off to develop a version of the product for a different market or to try an experimental feature without breaking the normal development. In some cases, you’ll eventually bring that split back into the main line.

Although in the next installment, I’ll give you some odd uses for Git you might find useful, this post is mostly the story of how Git came to be. Open source development is known for flame wars and there’s at least a few in this tale. And in true hacker fashion, the hero of the story decides he doesn’t like the tools he’s using so… well, what would you do?

Continue reading “History Of Git” →