linux VS usbarmory

> Torvalds answered that, while he used to find problems in the LLVM Clang compiler, now he's more likely to find problems with GCC instead; he now builds with Clang.

https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues is our bug tracker for known issues (a few are tracked in llvm's issue tracker). Bug reporters and future kernel hackers wanted!

As I mentioned on mastodon, there's lots of bugs still to be fixed everywhere, but even if we don't fix them, providing competition in the toolchain space has been worth it to users.

Linux builds on clang after a decade of dedicated effort to make it happen, and that is with clang overall being comparatively similar to gcc (e.g clang implements many gcc extensions): https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/wiki/Project-histor...

We got plenty of bugs for building the kernel with LLVM, if you're looking for tasks, pick one!

There's an semi-official github[0] for this.

AFAICT from the issue, Clang and binutils/LLVM tools work fine with no patches for the mainstream archs and when not trying to be super-fancy with custom flags. The more non-mainstream one goes with arch or flags the more likely one will run into something.

[0] https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues

If you have any reproducible issues please file them here: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues

See if you can build your distro's config. make LLVM=1 localmodconfig olddefconfig bzImage. Any warnings? Any warnings not in the issue tracker? If not, pick one from the issue tracker and see if you can reproduce it. Note: lots of issues are tagged by target ISA, so you'll need to get familiar with cross compiling (setting ARCH= and CROSS_COMPILE=.

It's a pipeline; clang starts, hands off to LLVM.

For a compilation to object file from source code, the vast majority of time for most translation units is spent in the front end of the pipeline, not the middle, or backend.

See also my first plot: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/1086#issueco...

Niklaus Wirth, rest his soul, would disagree.

Like would the the selling USB Armory, with Go written firmware.

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

Back in my day, writing compilers and OS services were also systems programming.

Not only you can fit Go into a kernel, there is at least two products that do so.

TamaGo, used to write the firmware used in USB armory.

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

TinyGo, which even has official Arduino and ARM support, and is sponsored by Google

https://tinygo.org/

Ah but that isn't proper Go! Well neither is the C code that is allowed to be used in typical kernel code, almost nothing from ISO C standard library is available, and usually plenty of compiler specific language extensions are used instead.

> Since 80s everybody designs systems on top of C.

More like since the 1990's, and mostly thanks to the GNU Manifesto and FOSS uptake that took the steam out of C++ adoption being pushed by Apple, IBM and Microsoft.

There is firmware in production written in Go,

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

Not exactly but close. No gocoin, but custom (minimal) client based on btcsuite libs. And it is run on USB Armory SoC.

Relocking with your own key is only for experts, it's similar to the USB Armory device for embedded electronics. If you get it wrong you can brick the device, the purpose of doing it is to protect against certain types of boot attacks (like if somebody can get temporary physical access to your phone or even just plant a malicious USB cable which could potentially push malware. If you don't know what you're doing, stay on stock OS.

Plenty of software that is written in C and C++, can be easily done in Go as well, in fact in any AOT compiled managed language.

C++ was born to write distributed systems, nowadays it hardly matters on cloud native infrastructure beyond the OS and hypervisors layer.

This is how Go can be a competitor to C and C++, just like Inferno was basically Plan 9 with Limbo for userspace and very little C beyond the kernel.

And then there are those crazy folks that believe they should ship bare metal AOT compiled languages regardless of others think.

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

Of course it can, there are companies shipping products written in bare metal Go.

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

https://github.com/usbarmory/tamago