Okay, but this seems like letting the perfect get in the way of the good? A maintained, readable, informal spec should be quite useful as a starting point for writing a more formal spec later.
It need not be definitive. It would be quite reasonable to point out areas that aren't nailed down yet - this is also useful for the reader.
Re:Rust is not a good C replacement
by TheCoelacanth on Monday March 25, 2019 @11:52AM
(#19483611)
What do you want out of an informal spec that isn't provided by "The Rust Reference"[1]?
It's useful but I'd like to see a bit more top-level completeness. Every feature should be listed and have at least a cursory description, even if it's not entirely nailed down.
(Maybe it already is like that, but the disclaimers say it's not.)
Re:Rust is not a good C replacement
by steveklabnik on Monday March 25, 2019 @01:00PM
(#19484265)
The vast, vast majority does, but there may be some missing bits. Printed out, it's about 170 sheets of paper, so there's a lot there.
Re:Rust is not a good C replacement
by edflsafoiewq on Monday March 25, 2019 @01:51PM
(#19484793)
Borrow checking rules.
I don't know what the current state of affairs is, but this is something they have rightly delayed specing. The original borrow checking rules were quite byzantine compared to what we have today.
I don't know if there is active work going towards making them more relaxed (NLL landed I believe). However, a ton of work has happened to get them out of the way as much as possible.
Re:Rust is not a good C replacement
by steveklabnik on Monday March 25, 2019 @11:43AM
(#19483524)
That's what the reference is, and it's there for exactly that purpose.
It's not that, it's that we take the idea of a spec very seriously. We want to have a spec that's extremely solid, and so there's a lot of foundational work that needs to be done first. That work has been ongoing. Not all specs are created equal, and good ones take a lot of time.
For comparison, C was created in 1972, and the first specification happened in 1989.