Re: filesystem notification extension

On 04-08-2024 20:27, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

On 30.07.2024 at 16:43, Frederik Bosch wrote:

On 30-07-2024 15:29, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

On 30.07.2024 at 14:43, Derick Rethans wrote:

I would also say that it is unexpected to suddenly also have to download a gazilion crates (it took 432MB!), on top of a whole rust compile stack. Server environments will not likely to have this pre-installed either.

But this is unlikely to be the right thread, and maybe even not the most suitable mailing list.  I wonder where to continue the discussion?

I've started a new thread about general discussion a few days ago, but didn't get any replies yet.

While I totally understand this feels like you get a node_modules folder for free when running cargo build, I did want to share my extension because there might be other people interested in using filesystem notifications. Personally, I use this to detect changes in #[Attributes] in my PHP classes. If you decide to refuse the extensions for PECL, I'd be disappointed, but I could also understand. I nonetheless agree with Christoph, as a developer this was a very good experience for creating an extension.

It's likely not only about the developer experience, but also about security. I've just learned about DARPA’s Translating All C to Rust (TRACTOR) program[2], and Microsoft already has started to rewrite core code in Rust, as well as the Linux kernel having added support for Rust[3]. And that's all about avoiding memory safety issues, typical for C code. Sooner or later PHP/PECL has to deal with Rust code, and it might be better to address that issue early (well, "early" was likely months ago, but well). I'm generally fine having PECL extensions written in Rust, *if* these extension clearly signal that requirement. A prominent note in the documentation would certainly a good first step. Not sure what else could be done; upgrading the PECL package.xml format might be an option (does it even signal whether an extension requires an C++ compiler?) And of course, we should see what the PIE developers have to say about that[4]. [1]<https://news-web.php.net/php.pecl.dev/17603> [2]<https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-07-31a> [3]<https://rust-for-linux.com/> [4]<https://github.com/php/pie/issues/26> Christoph

Dear Christoph, Thank you for your work so far. I think signaling, for me, is no problem. A specific tag or attribute in the package.xml would be a good way forward, maybe a new tag <cargo> under <dependencies>. But in the meantime the description tag and the documentation page can address it too. Regards, Frederik