Serious Linux kernel security hole uncovered

[George P]

Cubbi wrote:

a very C kind of a fix for a very C kind of a problem

I thought Linus Torvald has stated the Linux kernal will never be touched by the ickiness of C++.

Yeah, C++ isn't perfect but it does have features to deal with pointers at a better level than C.

[thmm]

I thought Linus Torvald has stated the Linux kernal will never be touched by the ickiness of C++.

Does he actually have the power? I thought the kernel is open-source. So what would prevent someone to make make a clone and use C++? Apart from the amount of work, of course.

[keskiverto]

what would prevent someone to make make a clone

You can make fork a project, but the original project remains the Linux kernel (unless you somehow get everyone* to switch into your branch).


*How many developers (and companies, like Intel, AMD, Google) are involved in the Linux kernel?

[helios]

what would prevent someone to make make a clone and use C++? Apart from the amount of work, of course.

Nothing. But upstream will not merge your changes and you will not be able to automatically merge changes from upstream, so you'll then be entirely on your own to maintain the codebase. Is C++ worth it?

[thmm]

Lets imagine a group of developers would create a kernel fork in C++. How would you get a distro, for example Ubuntu, to use it?

[seeplus]

ie what would be the USP (unique selling point) that would make users, distros etc want to use it as apart from what's already available?

[thmm]

Less memory related bugs.
Maybe better performance.

[Ganado]

To play devil's advocate: It's quite hard to prove if either of those things would be true.

[helios]

Lets imagine a group of developers would create a kernel fork in C++. How would you get a distro, for example Ubuntu, to use it?

Presumably it would maintain the same ABI as Linux, so it should be a drop-in replacement for the kernel. It should just be a matter of modifying any of those distributions to load your kernel instead of Linux, and after that the system would run as if nothing was different.

[thmm]

To play devil's advocate: It's quite hard to prove if either of those things would be true.

Yes it is, but somehow the Rust people managed to get their language in the kernel.

[helios]

Because ol' loony tarballs never put his ego on the line by swearing never to allow Rust into the kernel.

[seeplus]

Will the kernel now rust away...

[thmm]

Could be. Seems Rust isn't as efficient as some people want to believe.
https://codilime.com/blog/rust-vs-c-safety-and-performance-in-low-level-network-programming/

[Ganado]

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020, Rust is the most popular programming language.

(Among people who answer the 2020 Stack Overflow Developer Survey.)

[seeplus]

For 2021, C++ is 10th with Rust 16th (c is 12th, Python 3rd, Java 5th, c# 8th)
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-technologies-language