Go winnage (was: Re: REFCLOCK rises again)

[Eric S. Raymond]

Ian Bruene via devel <devel at ntpsec.org>:
> On 3/2/19 9:42 AM, Eric S. Raymond via devel wrote:
> > REFCLOCKD benefits way down, cost almost unchanged. Every time I model
> > this in my head the same answer comes out: bad idea.  I think we have
> > better complexity-reduction attacks available, like translating the
> > whole thing to Go to get rid of a lot of the resource-management hair
> > in the C code. But maybe you can change my mind?
> 
> The Go translation has by far the best chance of getting someone familiar
> enough with that seam to be able to the come back after the translation and
> fix it. After fixing the separation cost will drop.

I agree this is probably true.

I meant to mention that there are actually *two* big benefits in prospect from
a Go port.  The obvious one is being able to junk a lot of fiddly, error-prone
C memory-management stuff.

The less obvious one is maps.  Oh dear Goddess, maps!  So much C code, in this
suite and elsewhere, is boilerplate reinventing endless ways to look up things
by name.  I think we might drop as much LOC due to first-class maps as we will
due to being able to ditch malloc/free.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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