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Comment by smarx007 | Hacker News Reader

Memory corruption, now on Android!

Just gonna leave this here: https://safecpp.org/draft.html#the-call-for-memory-safety

P.S. Was discussed on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41528124

P.P.S. The author has a great YT channel with awesome embedded systems projects: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRymMFQl3Nktk_pjlUP_...

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Any effort to make android more accessible to a C ABI with a simple toolchain can probably also serve as an FFI to other languages.

Zig also much better at memory as far as I can tell. Only reason I found out about it was some random twitch clip I can't remember, but parts of zig seem to be more readable and easier to learn than rust. Granted I will not stop loving the C language even as someone who has only begun to learn C programming but I do recognise the need for secure software.

Check out this blog on zig memory safety: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/how-safe-is-zig/

(Not my blog, just a blog I found that discusses zig)

Zig is not at 1.0 yet so its a bit behind rust from what iv seen online. One I manage to get C under my belt and get good at writing los level stuff in that language, I might attempt to learn rust or zig.

Yes, I think Zig is the most suitable language (of Zig, Rust, Go, ...) to replace C in various (systems-related) contexts including embedded/RTOS.

If works with C why not Rust

Interfacing with C from Rust is harder, and Rust has fewer cross-compile targets.

I'd expect Zig to be an easier deal here, with its zero-impedance interface with C.

In my experience, C <-> Rust works quite well, except when the C API relies too much on macros.

C++ <-> Rust is much more annoying.

> Interfacing with C from Rust is harder

Sure, harder, but not really all that difficult. Run bindgen over the NDK headers and see what happens. Sure, for ergonomics you'll want to write safe Rust wrappers. After that's done once, it's done.

> Rust has fewer cross-compile targets.

Not really an issue here. Rust supports all the targets Android runs on. Natively, even:

    $ rustup target list | grep android
    aarch64-linux-android
    arm-linux-androideabi
    armv7-linux-androideabi
    i686-linux-android
    thumbv7neon-linux-androideabi
    x86_64-linux-android

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