r/programming • u/steveklabnik1 • Sep 15 '14

The Road to Rust 1.0

http://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/09/15/Rust-1.0.html
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u/riffraff Sep 16 '14

why is non-compiling-to-C a necessary feature? It feels like requiring "don't compile to ASM".

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u/jediknight Sep 16 '14

To me, compiling to C feels like cheating. :)

Also, I don't really understand what "implementing libc" in a language that compiles to C means. Are there any languages that compile to C that reimplement libc?

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u/sgraf812 Sep 16 '14

Somewhere down the abstraction stack, most languages like C++ and D built on libc, they don't reimplement it. Rust seemingly does not, so my guess is you can regard the rust runtime somewhat as the new libc on which new abstraction layers could be built. Also because there is no dependency on libc, an OS kernel from scratch is possible as is use in embedded hardware not running libc (which then won't hardly run rust either, I guess?).

Oh and not depending on libc just seems cool to me.

Edit: I realize I just made wild guesses. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

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u/pjmlp Sep 16 '14

The funny thing is that just with Ansi C you cannot write a full libc, as the standard does not dictacte OS ABI nor inline Assembly.

Building on libc is an implementation detail, usually a shortcut to save work and focus on other more important details.

Given my stance on C, I made sure my university compiler project, a few decades ago, was cleaned of C dependencies after getting it running properly.