zlacker

>>eclipt+(OP)
It looks like golang is going to have to deal with — again — OpenBSD treating libc as the interface with the kernel instead of syscalls being the interface with the kernel.

I wonder if there could be some way to sign a dynamic library to allow it to create direct system calls and then pass that as a kernel command line argument at boot?

>>__turb+3l
OpenBSD is certainly taking it quite far. They want to disallow system calls from all non-libc code segments so that only whitelisted code can interface with it.

It is not the only operating system in the "unstable kernel interface" group though. Linux is actually the only one with a stable system call interface.

I've written somewhat at length about this:

https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/linux-system-calls

>>matheu+lp
We need more fat kernels and less libcs, libc ties us forcibly to the C legacy. Time for more type safe and richer interfaces with the kernel.

>>KRAKRI+U21
What do you mean when you say "fat kernel"?

Also, FYI, OpenBSD is never going to stop being written in C, and is never going to introduce a language like Rust into the kernel [1], so there's little point in wishing for this.

If you wish to rid yourself of legacy of C (and therefore that of Unix), then OpenBSD, which is Unix (or derived from it) and will always be written in C, is not a good operating system for you.

Edit: Changed to be less rude; it wasn't my intention to be rude.

[1]: https://marc.info/?t=151233221700001&r=1&w=2

>>treali+0j1
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I don't really mind the kernel (or anything else) being written in C as such, but interacting with C from $other_language can be rather painful for various reasons. In Go the reason they do what they do is because integrating it with how the Go scheduler works is tricky, and getting rid of libc makes cross-compilation a lot easier.

So in short, it's a pragmatic thing more than anything else.

(Aside: that thread is a little bit outdated by the way, as I do believe there's a reasonably complete Rust coreutils implementation now. Not that I think Rust is a good fit for OpenBSD though – I wish people would stop conflating "safety" with "Rust".)

>>arp242+0U1
I understand. I don't actually like it, and I wouldn't want Linux to adopt the same practice; exposing raw syscalls in assembly rather than libc functions allows for a more flexible runtime, since C is a lot more limited (although that in itself invites greater security risk). I was saying that because, if you're asking for more type-safe kernel interfaces and frown upon uses of C, then the OpenBSD team seems like the last people you'd want to talk to. They're true Unix believers, love writing C and assembly, and dislike modern programming languages.

> Aside: that thread is a little bit outdated by the way, ...

Yeah, that thread was more to show that they really dislike the idea of replacing C with memory safe language, and instead say that people who can't program safely in C shouldn't be programming.

bytevolcano:

> I've always subscribed to the idea that too much safety results in too may idiots, and the same is true for all these "safe" programming languages. "Oh I don't have to write any form of bounds-checking, because the language will do it for me."

Nick Holland:

> Idiots who shouldn't be coding, coding. "safe" languages being trusted to be safe when in the hands of idiots. Like you said.

> The more I see of "safe" languages, the more I love assembly. Most people who call themselves programmers...shouldn't.

bytevolcano again (in the context of memory safe languages):

> A good programmer won't even need these languages in the first place. Case in point, the entire OpenBSD dev team. :)

They'd probably be fine if Go dropped support for OpenBSD altogether; they don't seem to have a high opinion of managed languages or their users.

>>treali+u72
I recommend against attempting to divine opinions of “the OpenBSD team” from mailing list randos. Theo is the only OpenBSD developer in that thread.

> They … dislike modern programming languages.

You based this statement on the words of random commenters. And yet OpenBSD maintains packages for these modern programming languages, and OpenBSD developers spend their free time actively sending patches and bug reports to these language projects to keep them running on OpenBSD. Why not look up the opinions of those people before writing sentences like that?