Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Rust Can Replace C In Python Libraries (infoworld.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the C-u-later dept.

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: Proponents of Rust, the language engineered by Mozilla to give developers both speed and memory safety, are stumping for the language as a long-term replacement for C and C++. But replacing software written in these languages can be a difficult, long-term project. One place where Rust could supplant C in the short term is in the traditionally C libraries used in other languages... [A] new spate of projects are making it easier to develop Rust libraries with convenient bindings to Python -- and to deploy Python packages that have Rust binaries.
The article specifically highlights these four new projects:
  • Rust-CPython - a set of bindings in Rust for the CPython runtime
  • PyO3 - a basic way to write Rust software with bindings to Python in both directions.
  • Snaek - lets developers create Rust libraries that are loaded dynamically into Python as needed, but don't rely on being linked statically against Python's runtime.
  • Cookiecutter PyPackage Rust Cross-Platform Publish - simplifies the process of bundling Rust binaries with a Python library.

2 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But why? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Informative

    We actually need to ditch people that cannot handle C. Go be a "business coder" but stay away from real programs.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Re:The future of rustlang is tied up with Mozilla by jma05 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Python and Perl would have never made it, if people filtered by that logic.

    Programming languages don't need a huge company backing them up, as long as there is enough of a community. If Rust folks are as zealous as the Ruby folks were during the Rails era, we will have a neat C++ replacement.

    I have not used Rust yet and have even been critical (as in, just add those semantics to C++ somehow and don't create a whole new replacement) of it. But the community does seem to be building momentum.

    A peek at module counts
    http://www.modulecounts.com/
    shows that the Rust community is quite active. They are not merely evangelizing it, but rapidly building value. It does not look like Mozilla is significantly driving it on the module front. It only has half the modules as Go (which is impressive for a zero-cost abstraction language compared to a language that is high level application language), but the modules seem to be accumulating at more than twice the speed now. Modules make the language.

    I wish Nim had that kind of momentum though. That is a language better aligned for my purposes.