Re: [9fans] Is Plan 9 C "Less Dangerous?"

[Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net>]

the most significant change that plan9’s c made (that i can think of) is compile time type checking between modules /files.

this helps but is not a huge improvement to safety.

the main reasons plan9’s kernel is fairly safe is its clean and simple design, which makes problems less likely.

nothing cleverer than that (imho). Sorry, no magic.

-Steve


> On 2 Sep 2018, at 19:16, Lucio De Re <lucio.dere@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 9/2/18, Chris McGee <newton688@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm reading this article about how they are going through the giant heaping
>> pile of Linux kernel code and trying to come up with safer practices to
>> avoid the "dangers" of C. The prevailing wisdom appears to be that things
>> should eventually be rewritten in Rust some day.
>> 
> Like hell they will! By the time they have even a minute portion of
> Linux running under a different language, the language-du-jour will
> have moved on. It's a monolith, it cannot be translated, unless it is
> mechanically. And we know how brilliant that is likely to be.
> 
>> How does everyone feel about the Plan 9/9front kernel? Have they gone
>> through hardening/testing exercises over the years? I'm curious what tools
>> are available to help discover bugs.
>> 
> Simplicity is Plan 9's most relevant trait here, but that's where you
> draw the line. If anyone feels like finding possible security holes in
> the Plan 9 or the 9front kernels, they have to have very strong
> motivation to do it. In general that motivation is spelled M-O-N-E-Y
> and no one is likely to find the 9 flavours worthy of a big lump of
> that resource.
> 
> My opinions, of course.
> 
> Lucio.