Why the switch to rust is suddenly on the table?

fw190d13

Hi!

I'm following the project very closely on a daily basis and I don't understand the whole situation.

What has changed since the moment when D was chosen over any other language?
How much effort will it take to rewrite everything in Rust?
How will this impact the development of the desktop version and its release date?

taaron

Yeah, seemed like a bit of a shocker to read that initially. "Re-evaluate in a few months" and "don't want to block our current development activities" really sounds like the release won't be stalled by this at all.

D is obviously something Ikey feels strongly about, and by the looks of it an extremely powerful language.

but tbh it doesn't seem like a good choice for a community driven open source project like this as it quite frankly doesn't have a lot of people using it. How many people will be using it in 5 or even 10 years? What will it's development look like then?

And as for what's changed since the project started - the Linux kernel now officially supports Rust for one.

Ikey

So we've actually been having some conversations with the DLang Foundation folk and some D developers. Instead of running for the hills we'd rather see where things are in a few months, and engage more with DLang in the interim.

Apparently the major source of issues lately was the druntime move and vast dmd changes. DIP1000 is approaching a good status, so I've requested (per Steven's advice) to be at the next (March) D Language Foundation Meeting where we could voice our concerns and talk through potential solutions.