A brief history of Rust at Facebook

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • rust

    Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.

    https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/65262 will allow crates to specify a minimum supported rust version (MSRV), this way, we can imagine cargo resolving algorithm taking the installed rust version into account when picking the version of a crate to download so it would pick the last version of the crate that still compile on your system.

    Another thing is the Sealed Rust / Ferrocene initiative [https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/]. The idea is to have a version of rust supported for a long time, and it is likely that many core crates from the ecosystem will decide to keep compatibility with that LTS version.

  • react-relay

    Relay is a JavaScript framework for building data-driven React applications.

    Not mentioned here but FB is rewriting the Relay compiler in Rust as well. Will be interesting to see how well it works.

    https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/3180

    Personally I've had trouble with the Relay compilers watch mode not picking up file changes but that might be a Watchman issue not a Relay compiler issue.

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    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • HHVM

    A virtual machine for executing programs written in Hack.

    If you ever need to work with PHP, use PHP/Hack developed by Facebook: https://hacklang.org/

    It's a compiled language built partially in Rust, being rewritten entirely in Rust, JIT compiled using HHVM: https://hhvm.com/

    I don't believe it's compatible with existing PHP codebases, but you could probably convert one over in a straightforward way, catching safety issues while you did it.

    Hack a modern and highly productive language that's in many ways as nearly sophisticated as Rust. (How many other languages have both opaque and transparent type aliases, for example? https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/type-aliases )

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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