Re:Writing an OS in Rust: Handling Exceptions
by bluejekyll on Sunday March 26, 2017 @06:31PM
(#13963730)
> don't need as much virtual memory protection because that's handled by the language.
This is true at compile time. But what does it do for you at runtime when bad actors will be trying to break any and all assumptions? The guarantees in the kernel need to be vigilant against attackers, so while the kernel itself might be simpler, the boundary with processes still needs a lot of constraints at runtime.
Re:Writing an OS in Rust: Handling Exceptions
by krzat on Monday March 27, 2017 @05:37AM
(#13966230)
I think the assumption here is that OS would only allow binaries built from safe rust code.
Re:Writing an OS in Rust: Handling Exceptions
by bluejekyll on Monday March 27, 2017 @11:18AM
(#13968399)
Sure, but I don't know how you'd still guard against runtime issues. I'm not even sure you could require user space only safe code.
Redox is cool but Unix has outlived it's usefulness at this point. Also. the Unix philosophy is the very anti-thesis of what I think is the Rust philosophy. I can imagine that a Rust port of QNX could be a big deal tho (QNX is/was only like 500KLOC of C, which could be like 100KLOC of Rust).
But I think that we need mode advanced systems, e.g. don't need as much virtual memory protection because that's handled by the language. There's actually quite a few things in the current OSs that seem to be pure anachronisms.