Re: [RFC PATCH v1 0/6] Implement ARM PL011 in Rust

["Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@linaro.org>]

On 10/6/24 21:59, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 at 14:23, Manos Pitsidianakis
> <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org> wrote:


>> Should QEMU provide wrapping Rust APIs over QEMU internals?
>> -----------------------------------------------------------
>> [qemuprovidewrappingrustapis] Back to [TOC]
>>
>> My personal opinion is no, with the reasoning being that QEMU internals
>> are not documented or stable. However I do not see why creating stable
>> opt-in interfaces is bad. It just needs someone to volunteer to maintain
>> it and ensure there are no breakages through versions.
> 
> Rust code will need to interface with QEMU's C APIs, so Rust wrappers
> seem unavoidable. Using a protocol like vhost-user might be possible
> in some cases. It separates the two codebases so they can both be
> native and without bindings, but that won't work for all parts of the
> QEMU source tree.
> 
> Stable APIs aren't necessary if most developers in the QEMU community
> are willing to work in both languages. They can adjust both C and Rust
> code when making changes to APIs. I find this preferable to having
> Rust maintainers whose job is to keep wrappers up-to-date. Those Rust
> maintainers would probably burn out. This seems like a question of
> which approach the developer community is comfortable with.

Both APIs must be updated in sync in order to pass CI, so having
the same developer updating both languages seems a requisite.