[jmillikin]

There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible.

Ctrl+F for "NonStop" in https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

[antihero]

Shouldn't these platforms work on getting Rust to support it rather than have our tools limited by what they can consume? https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs

[pyrale]

A maintainer for that specific platform was more into the line of thinking that Git should bend over backwards to support them because "loss of support could have societal impact [...] Leaving debit or credit card authorizers without a supported git would be, let's say, "bad"."

To me it looks like big corps enjoying the idea of having free service so they can avoid maintaining their own stuff, and trying the "too big to fail" fiddle on open source maintainers, with little effect.

[kstrauser]

Yes. It benefits them to have ubiquitous tools supported on their system. The vendors should put in the work to make that possible.

I don’t maintain any tools as popular as git or you’d know me by name, but darned if I’m going to put in more than about 2 minutes per year supporting non-Unix.

(This said as someone who was once paid to improve Ansible’s AIX support for an employer. Life’s too short to do that nonsense for free.)

[fweimer]

There isn't even a Nonstop port of GCC yet. Today, Nonstop is big-endian x86-64, so tacking this onto the existing backend is going to be interesting.

[steveklabnik]

That platform doesn’t support GCC either.

[akerl_]

Isn’t that’s what’s happening? The post says they’re moving forward.

[saghm]

At this point maybe it's time to let them solve the problem they've created for themselves by insisting on a closed C compiler in 2025.

[motorest]

> There's at least one proprietary platform that supports Git built by via a vendor-provided C compiler, but for which no public documentation exists and therefore no LLVM support is possible.

That's fine. The only impact is that they won't be able to use the latest and greatest release of Git.

Once those platforms work on their support for Rust they will be able to jump back to the latest and greatest.

[jlarocco]

It's sad to see people be so nonchalant about potentially killing off smaller platforms like this. As more barriers to entry are added, competition is going to decrease, and the software ecosystem is going to keep getting worse. First you need a lib C, now you need lib C and Rust, ...

But no doubt it's a great way for the big companies funding Rust development to undermine smaller players...

[maximilianburke]

Maybe they can resurrect the C backend for LLVM and run that through their proprietary compilers?

It's probably not straightforward but the users of NonStop hardware have a lot of money so I'm sure they could find a way.

[zozbot234]

Rust has an experimental C backend of its own as part of rustc_codegen_clr https://github.com/FractalFir/rustc_codegen_clr . Would probably work better than trying to transpile C from general LLVM IR.

[steveklabnik]

Given that the maintainer previously said they had tried to pay to get GCC and LLVM ported multiple times, all of which failed, money doesn’t seem to have helped.

[pxc]

Why should free software projects bend over backwards to support obscure proprietary platforms? Sounds absurd to me

[ksynwa]

Won't someome think of the financial sector

[mcny]

Reminds me of a conversation about TLS and how a certain bank wanted to insert a backdoor into all of TLS for their convenience.

[Hizonner]

Sucks to be that platform?

Seriously, I guess they just have to live without git if they're not willing to take on support for its tool chain. Nobody cares about NonStop but the very small number of people who use it... who are, by the way, very well capable of paying for it.

[kstrauser]

I strongly agree. I read some of the counter arguments, like this will make it too hard for NonStop devs to use git, and maybe make them not use it at all. Those don’t resonate with me at all. So what? What value does them using git provide to the git developers? I couldn’t care less if NonStop devs can use my own software at all. And since they’re exclusively at giant, well-financed corporations, they can crack open that wallet and pay someone to do the hard work if it means than much to them.

[MangoToupe]

How is this git's concern?

[StopDisinfo910]

They enjoy being portable and like things to stay that way so when they introduce a new toolchain dependency which will make it harder for some people to compile git, they point it out in their change log?

[kazinator]

Git's main concern should, of course, be getting Rust in, in some shape or form.

[jrpelkonen]

I am curious, does anyone know what is the use case that mandates the use of git on NonStop? Do people actually commit code from this platform? Seems wild.

[formerly_proven]

Nonstop is still supported? :o