Post #1971059

2026-05-04 16:22 UTC

@zeenix @pid_eins I think there are valid things to criticize Rust for, and std's filesystem APIs is one of those things. Rust also eliminates a massive category of vulnerabilities and significantly improves security posture. Both can be true at once. Pretending that it's not a problem isn't going to help push projects like systemd towards a direction where we start using Rust. In fact, probably the opposite.

Replies (1)

@ekuber@hachyderm.io 2026-05-04 16:34

@AdrianVovk @zeenix @pid_eins ignoring the problems with and current limitations of the current Rust std APIs is bad, as it doesn't leave an open path to improve them. Ignoring the real limitations for why those APIs haven't yet been changed, given that Rust's std must support platforms that don't have the necessary primitives, doesn't help improve things either. There are crates that implement the desired APIs, supporting only Windows, modern Linux and macOS, and that's what most people should likely be using. A crate can also make the decision to support platforms on a best effort manner and "lie" about what the underlying platform supports (like the win9x Rust port does), but that is not suitable for the std.

Open ##1971061