On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Ben Kloosterman <[email protected]>wrote:

> Jonathan you mentioned the cost of unsafe as a tax on  the user but there
> are many apps where the introduction of a 3rd party lib/dll is a
> significant problem possibly as significant as memory / type safety .  Look
> at unsafe language browsers that work well but grow unstable with add ins.
>

Sure, but the main source of that instability is the lack of safety and
isolation of the add-in.


> ****
>
> Also isn’t the issue of not finding the correct single instance when there
> is only 1 only valid for runtime /jit compilation ?
>

I don't believe so.


> -You can merge all those types from multiple crates into an single crate
> and statically compile them ( isn’t that what bitc did ) than remove what
> is not needed . This is expensive but it doesn’t matter for binary distro
> and LLVM is slow to compile anyway .  That is the case 1 I mentioned  , and
> when needed ( eg public duplicates) explicitly state the implementation (
> that is not a huge burden IMHO) . This covers many apps .
>

This is a discussion that we have had on the BitC list before. The BitC
whole-program compile was always a temporary expedient. It was *always* my
belief (and remains my belief) that we need to be able to support versioned
dynamic libraries or their equivalent. For an operating system kernel,
whole-program compilation is an option (indeed, a necessity). For general
applications it is not.

In consequence, there is no way at static compile time to determine
instance uniqueness *unless* instances obey lexical scoping rules.


> “Would I like a different approach to application structure? Sure. Right
> now that's not the problem I'm trying to solve.”
>
> **
>
> ** **
>
> Is it a problem that can be addressed well in isolation ? Why not a roll
> in the language that makes it better , many languages encourage different
> architectural styles which leave other styles weak.  Rust Tasks encourage a
> certain style of architecture
>

I don't think it can be solved in isolation, but that's not really the
point. It isn't the problem I'm trying to solve with BitC.

****
>
> My comments was related to open source IOC apps which use 3rd party libs/
> add ons  as having huge security issues.
>

I have every confidence that this is a major issue. And it *may* even be an
issue that BitC can solve - or at least strongly mitigate. But the solution
is going to require re-architecture of libraries and add-ins, and that
takes time. Even if there is a better ultimate solution, we need to be able
to migrate programs *today*.


Jonathan
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