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digitalmars.D - What is the current progress on "Safety and Memory Management"?

reply maik klein <maikklein googlemail.com> writes:
https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2016H2

Safety and Memory Management

Safety and making the GC optional remain important concerns 
through the end of this year. We are putting them together 
because the GC alternatives we endorse must address safety.


Has there been any progress so far? Are there any DIPs to improve 
no gc code?
Jul 15 2016
parent reply The D dude <thedlangdude gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 15 July 2016 at 12:59:39 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2016H2

 Safety and Memory Management

 Safety and making the GC optional remain important concerns 
 through the end of this year. We are putting them together 
 because the GC alternatives we endorse must address safety.


 Has there been any progress so far? Are there any DIPs to 
 improve no gc code?


I can see these two:

http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP18 (a bit outdated)
http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP68

I can remember that there was talk about making allow to use a 
custom allocator with `new`, but I haven't seen a proposal yet.

I do encourage you to volunteer, doing the research & submitting 
your idea(s) for a change ;-)
Jul 16 2016
parent reply maik klein <maikklein googlemail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 20:38:05 UTC, The D dude wrote:

 On Friday, 15 July 2016 at 12:59:39 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2016H2

 Safety and Memory Management

 Safety and making the GC optional remain important concerns 
 through the end of this year. We are putting them together 
 because the GC alternatives we endorse must address safety.


 Has there been any progress so far? Are there any DIPs to 
 improve no gc code?


 I can see these two:

 http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP18 (a bit outdated)
 http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP68

 I can remember that there was talk about making allow to use a 
 custom allocator with `new`, but I haven't seen a proposal yet.

 I do encourage you to volunteer, doing the research & 
 submitting your idea(s) for a change ;-)


I was actually thinking of contributing something bigger as part 
of my bachelor thesis. (Not sure if I am allowed to do that)

What I wanted to do is to translate a big part of Rust's std to 
D. Stuff like Rc, Arc, Box, Optional + all the necessary tools 
for ownership semantics.

Also implement data structures that work with ownership semantics 
(Rc, Box, Arc etc)  like Vec, HashMap.

Add ownership semantics to phobos, for example a lot of stuff in 
phobos can't be used with non copyable types. (A lot of things 
rely on copying)

I have already implemented a small part of Rusts std but it felt 
like that I was the only one interested in this. (I am aware of 
RefCounted, Unique, Nullable etc)

I would definitely put some spare time into researching this a 
bit more if there is some interest.
Jul 16 2016
next sibling parent Enamex <enamex+d outlook.com> writes:
On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 21:45:17 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 I was actually thinking of contributing something bigger as 
 part of my bachelor thesis. (Not sure if I am allowed to do 
 that)

 What I wanted to do is to translate a big part of Rust's std to 
 D. Stuff like Rc, Arc, Box, Optional + all the necessary tools 
 for ownership semantics.

 Also implement data structures that work with ownership 
 semantics (Rc, Box, Arc etc)  like Vec, HashMap.

 Add ownership semantics to phobos, for example a lot of stuff 
 in phobos can't be used with non copyable types. (A lot of 
 things rely on copying)

 I have already implemented a small part of Rusts std but it 
 felt like that I was the only one interested in this. (I am 
 aware of RefCounted, Unique, Nullable etc)

 I would definitely put some spare time into researching this a 
 bit more if there is some interest.


That sounds very interesting. You mean to encode Rust-like 
ownership semantics at runtime for a complete alternative stdlib 
in D?
Jul 16 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent reply qznc <qznc web.de> writes:
On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 21:45:17 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 I was actually thinking of contributing something bigger as 
 part of my bachelor thesis. (Not sure if I am allowed to do 
 that)

 What I wanted to do is to translate a big part of Rust's std to 
 D. Stuff like Rc, Arc, Box, Optional + all the necessary tools 
 for ownership semantics.

 Also implement data structures that work with ownership 
 semantics (Rc, Box, Arc etc)  like Vec, HashMap.

 Add ownership semantics to phobos, for example a lot of stuff 
 in phobos can't be used with non copyable types. (A lot of 
 things rely on copying)


If I were your advisor, I would suggest not to think about 
Phobos. Just build your own library and publish via dub. Getting 
a contribution into Phobos is not a good use of time for a 
bachelor thesis.

Apart from that: Ownership semantics as a library is a great 
topic! Go for it.
Jul 16 2016
next sibling parent Karabuta <karabutaworld gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 17 July 2016 at 06:05:27 UTC, qznc wrote:

 On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 21:45:17 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 I was actually thinking of contributing something bigger as 
 part of my bachelor thesis. (Not sure if I am allowed to do 
 that)

 What I wanted to do is to translate a big part of Rust's std 
 to D. Stuff like Rc, Arc, Box, Optional + all the necessary 
 tools for ownership semantics.

 Also implement data structures that work with ownership 
 semantics (Rc, Box, Arc etc)  like Vec, HashMap.

 Add ownership semantics to phobos, for example a lot of stuff 
 in phobos can't be used with non copyable types. (A lot of 
 things rely on copying)


 If I were your advisor, I would suggest not to think about 
 Phobos. Just build your own library and publish via dub. 
 Getting a contribution into Phobos is not a good use of time 
 for a bachelor thesis.

 Apart from that: Ownership semantics as a library is a great 
 topic! Go for it.


+1
Jul 19 2016
prev sibling parent reply maik klein <maikklein googlemail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 17 July 2016 at 06:05:27 UTC, qznc wrote:

 If I were your advisor, I would suggest not to think about 
 Phobos. Just build your own library and publish via dub. 
 Getting a contribution into Phobos is not a good use of time 
 for a bachelor thesis.

 Apart from that: Ownership semantics as a library is a great 
 topic! Go for it.


That was the initial idea, but its not completely feasible to 
have it as a standalone library because a few things in phobos 
just need to be fixed for it to be practical. For example 
"Tuple", I could and will have a separate Tuple implementation 
but it would be very nice if I could at one point forward some 
changes to phobos. Probably in combination with a DIP and why 
those changes are needed.

Also some safety features of Rust could also be implemented as a 
library for example Sync and Send. See 
https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/send-and-sync.html

My major concern is that I am not sure if the D community wants 
to have similar ownership semantics of C++ / Rust.


 Walter and Andrei have, in the past, stated many times that 
 they believe Rust's approach to the memory safety problem is 
 too complex and not a good fit for D. They have been exploring 
 alternative solutions for a while now, and will probably 
 announce something eventually.

 Nothing significant gets added to the language, runtime, or 
 standard library without their approval - no matter how popular 
 it is with the community.

 So, make sure that you get explicit pre-approval from them 
 before you waste your time, unless everything you want to do 
 can be implemented as a normal stand-alone DUB package.


I don't want to implement any memory safety at all, I just want 
to implement a proper library to avoid the GC. I just listed Rust 
because Rusts's std lib is open source, readable and feature 
rich. (+ I am already familiar with it)
Jul 19 2016
parent tsbockman <thomas.bockman gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 July 2016 at 13:01:23 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 I don't want to implement any memory safety at all,


If you don't care about memory safety, I expect that your efforts 
to modify Phobos for that purpose will be unwelcome. The D 
leadership are actively working on non-GC memory management, but 
safety is a high priority.

A third-party library for unsafe memory management might see some 
adoption - but it also risks being made irrelevant when and if 
the official project for safe memory management finally bears 
fruit.
Jul 19 2016
prev sibling parent tsbockman <thomas.bockman gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 21:45:17 UTC, maik klein wrote:

 What I wanted to do is to translate a big part of Rust's std to 
 D. Stuff like Rc, Arc, Box, Optional + all the necessary tools 
 for ownership semantics.

 Also implement data structures that work with ownership 
 semantics (Rc, Box, Arc etc)  like Vec, HashMap.

 Add ownership semantics to phobos, for example a lot of stuff 
 in phobos can't be used with non copyable types. (A lot of 
 things rely on copying)

 I have already implemented a small part of Rusts std but it 
 felt like that I was the only one interested in this. (I am 
 aware of RefCounted, Unique, Nullable etc)

 I would definitely put some spare time into researching this a 
 bit more if there is some interest.


Walter and Andrei have, in the past, stated many times that they 
believe Rust's approach to the memory safety problem is too 
complex and not a good fit for D. They have been exploring 
alternative solutions for a while now, and will probably announce 
something eventually.

Nothing significant gets added to the language, runtime, or 
standard library without their approval - no matter how popular 
it is with the community.

So, make sure that you get explicit pre-approval from them before 
you waste your time, unless everything you want to do can be 
implemented as a normal stand-alone DUB package.
Jul 18 2016