cargo-raze VS Pgen

The same reason Bazel builds avoid using Cargo when building Rust software, so I'll describe why Bazel would do this:

- Bazel wants to cache remote resources, like each respective crate's source files.

- Bazel then wants to build each crate in a sandbox, and cache the build artifacts

This is an established practice, and Nix wants to drive the build for the same reasons.

See:

- https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_rust

- https://github.com/google/cargo-raze

I can make much more sense of C++ code to ensure that two build systems produce the same effect than I can parse and learn two completely unconnected programming languages deeply enough to do the same. I can unit-test core routines. I can as easily extract core logic into shared (configuration) files etc. The benefit of a standard is not to discourage alternatives but rather to agree on definitive semantics and shared and common needs (that is: in this case needs for interfaces to the compiler/linker). The implementation and general availabilty is just one of the by-product. The ability to do introspection in common terms is maybe the most consequential other product, and this is critical for 'transpiling' to other build systems and writing automated adapters such as the one that bazel is recommend for cargo's dependency management.

Cargo is not that tightly coupled with Rust. You can absolutely use bare rustc, and in fact people do that with other build systems like Bazel.

Interesting, aren't the community-driven crates for these areas satisfactory enough? There's PROST and tonic, and quite well-used. I don't know about Bazel though, but I found this. Feel free to correct me on this subject, I admit I don't know that much about it.

There is a project to generate Bazel BUILD files from Cargo.toml.

Correct Battery Horse Staple :)

Speaking of which, if you want to generate long memorable passphrases, I have an open source cli tool I wrote for that, which I myself use.

https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

Give it a spin

This xkcd comic has been instrumental to me.

I wrote a command-line utility a couple of years ago that I use myself regularly to generate secure and memorable passwords

https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

With this tool you can also see how many bits of entropy the passphrase generation settings you are using will result in.

For example, generating a 5 word password using the long wordlist

    pgen -l -n 5

Around 2011 I set up full disk encryption for the first time. The systems I did this on were some second hand computers that I had bought and installed FreeBSD on. The systems were very stable. Too stable! They were running for several weeks until one day when there was a power outage. I booted the machines and promptly realised that I was not entirely sure about what the convoluted password I had chosen for full disk encryption was exactly.

I lost quite a bit of data that day.

It taught me to stop with silly 5|_|1357:7|_|7:0|\|5 and to use long passphrases instead. This ensures high entropy without the possibility of forgetting symbols chosen, because there are no symbols to remember.

It also taught me to frequently reboot my computers, so that I remember the passphrases to decrypt the disks.

I have a tool that I wrote and which I actively use myself for generating passphrases, it’s called Pgen and it’s open source at https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

Interesting points and I agree.

Makes me wonder if I should’ve picked a different name for my passphrase generator. I named it “Pgen” and I use it several times per month.

https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

Perhaps “passblazer” or something would have been a better name :thinking:

Unfortunately, it’s not really possible to rename it at this point :/

Oh well, maybe some other time I can come up with a creative name for a project instead of an overly descriptive name :)

My greatest accomplishments on GitHub are my projects that I actively use myself, and which other people are using as well.

https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

Pgen is a passphrase generator that uses the EFF wordlists for random passphrases.

A typical passphrase generated with Pgen looks like:

oxford antelope veteran thorn dastardly gem tripod upfront avocado femur moisture sacrifice

Pgen is written in Rust.

Browse my GitHub profile to see some other projects as well, including my “repotools” project which is very basic but super useful and I invoke the repotools commands many times every day.

I also have my zshrc on GitHub, the main selling-point of which is the way I have set up my PS1 prompt. It uses different emojis for different machines and adds some extra white space. The emojis are useful because for a long time I sometimes found it difficult to quickly identify which terminal is logged into which host when I have many terminals open some of which are connected to ssh. Having the host name in the print is nice and all but when you have a handful of terminals open or more it’s not very distinct. Coloured emojis take small space and make each host distinct. Vertical spacing between each command invocation makes it more comfortable to read scroll back and more quick to scan.