rust-mos VS rust

For Commodore the computer, there is a Rust and LLVM fork for MOS:

- https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

It's able to generate binaries that are executed on C64. Tried it on the

rust the compiler, hell no.

But there is an llvm-mos project to generate 6502 code and that can be used to cross compile rust code.

https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Welcome

https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Rust

https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

It was possible thanks to great https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Welcome project (it adds 6502 target to LLVM). Adding 6502 support to rust was easy part :] https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

This is a super fun project to play around with. I'm currently trying to build a C64 sprite multiplexer in mostly straight C++ using LLVM-MOS and while it's definitely not going to be the most optimized multiplexer out there, I'm finding it most adequate performance-wise.

Whereas it's probably a long way away from being able to use this for democoding due to the mostly cycle-accurate nature of the effects, for creating homebrew games and utilities this is really quite suitable: write high-level logic and sprinkle in some inline assembly here and there for the really performance critical parts.

The code that is being generated is already quite good and (on first glance) looks better than what's coming out of cc65, for instance.

There's also rust-mos which uses LLVM-MOS to compile Rust code. It unfortunately still has some issues (e.g. [1]) but that is looking really promising as well.

Kudos to all involved :)

[1] https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos/issues/16

The MEGA 65 doesn't appear to have shipped yet. The best data I could find is the MEGA 65 is based on a "GS4510". The "GS4510" is compatible with a "4502", which in turn is compatible with the 65CE02. The 65CE02 uses a different manufacturing process but the same ISA as the 6502, which is supported by rust-mos and lvm-mos](https://github.com/llvm-mos/llvm-mos).

Using llvm-mos, rust-mos, a lot of time compiling compilers and support from Mariusz (the rust-mos author), I was finally able to program like it was 1982...

This fork is handy for that. It’s fun to play with, but you need to do a decent amount yourself to get it set up.

https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

Thanks to llvm-mos project there is also working rust fork for MOS-6502: https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos/tree/mos_target, so you can target 8-bit atari and c64

A long-standing issue with that was just recently fixed: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/133250

By the way, genawaiter is also an interesting library that uses the async-await mechanism to implement the generator in the stable version of Rust. As we know, async-await is essentially a generator, and also relies on the compiler’s CPS transformation to implement the state machine. However, async-await was stabilized a long time ago due to the strong need for asynchronous programming, whereas the generator feature lagged behind. The similar principles behind them allows their mutual implementation. In addition, the Rust community is actively promoting async generators, with native async gen and for await syntax entering the nightly version. However, since it is not integrated with the futures ecosystem, it remains in an unusable state overall. RisingWave‘s stream processing engine relies heavily on async generator ****mechanism to implement its streaming operators, simplifying streaming state management under asynchronous IO. That's another extensive topic, and we'll discuss the relevant applications if there is an opportunity later.

Might not.

Rust has a state of the art sort implementation. There’s nothing faster, in any language - https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/124032.

And sure, it’s possible that someone could write a C program that compares in speed to all the Rust programs I’ve mentioned. C is a Turing complete language after all. I’m only pointing out that it hasn’t happened in practice.

Also check the Android Binder code before (C https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/androi...) and after (Rust - https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/native/...). Same speed but the quality difference, it’s incomparable.

To be honest I don't think it is possible in Raku. It can be done in Rust using it's ownership transfers and borrow checker, but that is subject for another blog post :)

> But Rust has a better workaround to create stack traces: the backtrace module, which allows capturing stack traces that you can then add to the errors you return. The main problem with this approach is that you still have to add the stack trace to each error and also trust library authors to do so.

That's technically true, but the situation is not as dire. Many errors do not need stack traces. That so few carry a backtrace in Rust is mostly a result of the functionality still not being stable [1].

The I think bigger issue is that people largely have given up on stack traces I think, in parts because of async programming. There are more and more programming patterns and libraries where back traces are completely useless. For instance in JavaScript I keep working with dependencies that just come minified or transpiled straight out of npm. In theory node has async stack traces now, but I have yet to see this work through `setTimeout` and friends. It's very common to lose parts of the stack.

Because there are now so many situations where stack traces are unreliable, more and more programmers seemingly do lose trust in them and don't see the value they once provided.

I also see it in parts at Sentry where a shocking number of customers are completely willing to work with just minified stack traces and not set up source maps to make them readable.

[1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/99301

As to internal technology, it is written in Rust language and depends on them with big thanks:

Fast Node Manager lets us switch between them quickly. It's written in Rust which is a very cool language I know nothing about other than it runs really fast and is used for mission-critical systems.

Box::leak was added two years later in November 2017 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/commit/360ce780fdae0dcb31c...

>Crashes, stability, and performance issues are still not safety issues since there’s so many ways to cause those beyond memory leaks.

They aren't safety issues according to Rust's definition, but Rust's definition of "unsafe" is basically just "whatever Rust prevents". But that is just begging the question: they don't stop being serious safety issues just because Rust can't prevent them.

If Rust said it dealt with most safety issues, or the most serious safety issues, or similar, that would be fine. Instead the situation is that they define data races as unsafe (because Rust prevents data races) but race conditions as safe (because Rust does not prevent them in general) even though obviously race conditions are a serious safety issue.

For example you cannot get memory leaks in a language without mutation, and therefore without cyclic data structures. And in fact Rust has no cyclic data structures naturally, as far as I am aware: all cyclic data structures require some "unsafe" somewhere, even if it is inside RefCell/Rc in most cases. So truly safe Rust (Rust without any unsafe at all) is leakfree, I think?

The rust cygwin target has been merged (in a different attempt): https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/134999