Rewrite Tor in Rust

[kibwen]

The OP is likely nothing more than wishful thinking, but I can see why people are intrigued by the prospect. An important thing to note is that it's entirely possible to perform a slow, gradual integration of Rust code into a C/C++ codebase (such as Mozilla is doing with Firefox), but only if your codebase is sufficiently modular with well-defined interfaces for Rust-based libs to slot into. If all you've got is a big ball of mud, then your first step is to work on the modularization of your codebase (which, IMO, has a good chance of increasing your code quality regardless of whether you eventually decide to introduce any Rust).

[voiper1]

>If all you've got is a big ball of mud, then your first step is to work on the modularization of your codebase (which, IMO, has a good chance of increasing your code quality regardless of whether you eventually decide to introduce any Rust).

I wanted to up-vote that bit.

[MichaelGG]

Since Rust and C can agree on ABI and memory layout issues, you can move the code over function-by-function if you were so inclined, right? Declare the structs in the headers and auto-gen the Rust versions (is there a tool for the inverse?).

[alexnewman]

You end up having to toss a layer of c around your c++ last time I checked. Does c++ even have an abi yet?

[axman6]

As a side note, Galois have written an implementation of Tor which happily interacts with official tor, for use in HalVM based unikernels. So, if you want ephemeral tor nodes, HalVM is a pretty great way to get it working.

Edit: Video about it [2]

[1] https://github.com/GaloisInc/haskell-tor [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHcHTFleNtg

[CoconutPilot]

Is there an anti-pattern for this kind of thing? Its a two line bug report suggesting years of development effort. There is a huge multiplication factor between the time invested by the bug reporter and the time required to do what he asks.

[alexnewman]

Only if your goal is to doom the existing tor project. Lots of great research projects start this way. Often times it influences the main project or merges.

[erlend_sh]

The discussion is 10 months old and never went anywhere. What makes this relevant now?

[roywiggins]

It would be a bit embarrassing to rewrite in Rust and then have the network penetrated because they screwed up the crypto during the rewrite...