fish-riir-plan.md (archive.org)
fish-shell#9512 - Rewrite it in Rust
Why Port
- Gain access to more contributors and enable easier contributions. C++ is becoming a legacy language.
- Free us from the annoyances of C++/CMake, and old toolchains.
- Ensure fish continues to be perceived as modern and relevant.
- Unlock concurrent mode (see below).
Why Rust
- Rust is a systems programming language with broad platform support, a large community, and a relatively high probability of still being relevant in a decade.
- Rust has a unique strength in its thread safety features, which is the missing piece to enable concurrent mode - see below.
- Other languages considered:
- Java, Python and the scripting family are ruled out for startup latency and memory usage reasons.
- Go would be an awkward fit. fork is quite the problem in Go.
- Other system languages (D, Nim, Zig...) are too niche: fewer contributors, higher risk of the language becoming irrelevant.
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