Re: [PATCH 1/7] rust: file: add Rust abstraction for `struct file`

From: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>
To: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: "Matthew Wilcox" <willy@infradead.org>,
	"Alice Ryhl" <aliceryhl@google.com>,
	"Miguel Ojeda" <ojeda@kernel.org>,
	"Alex Gaynor" <alex.gaynor@gmail.com>,
	"Wedson Almeida Filho" <wedsonaf@gmail.com>,
	"Gary Guo" <gary@garyguo.net>,
	"Björn Roy Baron" <bjorn3_gh@protonmail.com>,
	"Benno Lossin" <benno.lossin@proton.me>,
	"Andreas Hindborg" <a.hindborg@samsung.com>,
	"Alexander Viro" <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	"Christian Brauner" <brauner@kernel.org>,
	"Greg Kroah-Hartman" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	"Arve Hjønnevåg" <arve@android.com>,
	"Todd Kjos" <tkjos@android.com>,
	"Martijn Coenen" <maco@android.com>,
	"Joel Fernandes" <joel@joelfernandes.org>,
	"Carlos Llamas" <cmllamas@google.com>,
	"Suren Baghdasaryan" <surenb@google.com>,
	"Dan Williams" <dan.j.williams@intel.com>,
	"Kees Cook" <keescook@chromium.org>,
	"Thomas Gleixner" <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	"Daniel Xu" <dxu@dxuuu.xyz>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, rust-for-linux@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	"Josh Triplett" <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/7] rust: file: add Rust abstraction for `struct file`
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2023 02:36:40 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZWm3OGWWhIWmB9gV@Boquns-Mac-mini.home> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20231201094037.GI3818@noisy.programming.kicks-ass.net>

On Fri, Dec 01, 2023 at 10:40:37AM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 01, 2023 at 01:19:14AM -0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> 
> > > > 	https://github.com/Amanieu/rfcs/blob/inline-asm/text/0000-inline-asm.md#asm-goto
> > > 
> > > Reading that makes all this even worse, apparently rust can't even use
> > > memops.
> > 
> > What do you mean by "memops"?
> 
> Above link has the below in "future possibilities":
> 
> "Memory operands
> 
> We could support mem as an alternative to specifying a register class
> which would leave the operand in memory and instead produce a memory
> address when inserted into the asm string. This would allow generating
> more efficient code by taking advantage of addressing modes instead of
> using an intermediate register to hold the computed address."
> 
> Just so happens that every x86 atomic block uses memops.. and per-cpu
> and ...
> 

Oh yes, I found out Rust's asm! doesn't support specifying a memory
location as input or output recently as well.

I don't speak for the Rust langauge community, but I think this is
something that they should improve. I understand it could be frustrating
that we find out the new stuff doesn't support good old tools we use
(trust me, I do!), but I believe you also understand that a higher level
language can help in some places, for example, SBRM is naturally
supported ;-) This answers half of the question: "Why are we even trying
to use it again?".

The other half is how languages are designed is different in these days:
a language community may do a better job on listening to the users and
the real use cases can affect the language design in return. While we
are doing our own experiment, we might well give that a shot too.

And at least the document admits these are "future possibilities", so
they should be more motivated to implement these.

It's never perfect, but we gotta start somewhere.

Regards,
Boqun

> 