Mozilla Binds Firefox's Fate To The Rust Language (infoworld.com)

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: After version 53, Firefox will require Rust to compile successfully, due to the presence of Firefox components built with the language. But this decision may restrict the number of platforms that Firefox can be ported to -- for now... Rust depends on LLVM, which has dependencies of its own -- and all of them would need to be supported on the target platform. A discussion on the Bugzilla tracker for Firefox raises many of these points...

What about proper support for Linux distributions with long-term support, where the tools available on the distro are often frozen, and where newer Rust features might not be available? What about support for Firefox on "non-tier-1" platforms, which make up a smaller share of Firefox users? Mozilla's stance is that in the long run, the pain of transition will be worth it. "The advantage of using Rust is too great," according to maintainer Ted Mielczarek. "We normally don't go out of our way to make life harder for people maintaining Firefox ports, but in this case we can't let lesser-used platforms restrict us from using Rust in Firefox."
InfoWorld points out most Firefox users won't be affected, adding that those who are should "marshal efforts to build out whatever platforms need Rust support." Since most users just want Mozilla to deliver a fast and feature-competitive browser, the article concludes that "The pressure's on not only to move to Rust, but to prove the move was worth it."

Comments

Re:the future of Mozilla

[geek]

A browser nobody uses written in a language nobody uses.

Quick, let Dropbox know no one uses Rust. I mean they went and re-wrote their entire back end in it. If only they thought like you such a crisis could have been averted.

Re:Courage.

[DrXym]

Rust is pretty easy to program in, more so that C or C++ in some ways, harder in others. It definitely has a mindset / steep learning curve associated with using it for the first time. In C or C++ it's far too easy to allocate memory and forget to free it (or free it multiple times), or stomp over the end of the buffer, or have two threads write to the same data, or call a pointer which isn't there.

It is very hard to do those things in Rust and that what makes it an excellent systems programming language. It has equivalent performance to C or C++ - almost all checks are at compile time and compile away to nothing in the generated code, and yet the quality of the code is higher because there are less ways it can fail when it passes those checks. That's an extremely compelling argument for code that is expected to run for months or years without failure.

Aside from the language itself, the std library is way better than for C++ and cross platform. And building software or pulling in external libraries is incredibly easy thanks to the package manager / build tool. It still has some rough edges, but nothing I would consider a blocker.

Re:Assembly language is good enough for anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla have repeatedly shown that they won't tolerate opposing opinions and will fire you if your opinions are not in line with theirs. They chased out Brendan Eich because his opinions and they promised to hunt down and fire a Mozilla employee who posted his opinions online:

http://www.dailydot.com/debug/mozilla-reddit-hate-speech-firing/

So, not only do we have two clear cases of them chasing programmers out, they've probably deterred a great many other programmers from wanting to join. I would therefore say his claim that "Mozilla has chased the good programmers away because they didn't agree with some SJW agenda" is simply a statement of fact.

Also, I'm offended by your comment. I think you should check your Rust code of conduct to see how you should respond to this:

And if someone takes issue with something you said or did, resist the urge to be defensive. Just stop doing what it was they complained about and apologize.

I expect an apology immediately, otherwise you're banned from using Rust.