Top all-time · #5584
Stefan Hajnoczi
Personal blog · blog.vmsplice.netsystemsprogramming
Stefan Hajnoczi's personal blog at blog.vmsplice.net covers systems and programming. Since 2015, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “QEMU should move from C to Rust”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-01-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Stefan Hajnoczi's blog for posts on QEMU and whether it should move from C to Rust, peer-to-peer git forges, and the passt user-mode networking stack. Comments cite these posts as sources or counterpoints.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Open source and virtualization blog
Most-linked posts?
- QEMU should move from C to Rust6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-08-06
- Git Forge Apps: Why git forges are serverless computing providers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-30
- A new approach to usermode networking with passt2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-15
- Understanding Peer-to-Peer Git Forges with Radicle2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-06
What Hacker News says?
This is an interesting idea. I found the "How it Works" page a little confusing and have tried to explain the core ideas in a different way here: http://blog.vmsplice.net/2020/12/understanding-peer-to-peer-... This doesn't cover how Radicle works but instead explains the general ideas of peer-to-peer git forges.
Comment linking /2020/12/understanding-peer-to-peer-git-forges.html
on “Radicle: A peer-to-peer alternative to GitHub”Submitted QEMU should move from C to Rust as a story · 208 points
HN discussionAnd 'ghostwriter stated elsewhere in this thread that the previous round of these comments was in reply to an article talking about how QEMU should start to develop new device backends as out-of-process Rust programs - which also was not about outsiders proposing a complete rewrite, either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133292 http://blog.vmsplice.net/2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c... Perhaps the most…
Comment linking /2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c-to-rust.html
on “Supporting Linux kernel development in Rust”Submitted QEMU AioContext removal and how it was done as a story · 120 points
HN discussion> We should care about arguments from people who have done substantial work. OK, we can drop the HN comments. Since Stefan Hajnoczi is a substantial QEMU contributor, how would you respond to the arguments linked in http://blog.vmsplice.net/2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c... ?
Comment linking /2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c-to-rust.html
on “Gitoxide: Pure Rust Implementation of Git”Submitted Where are the supply chain safe programming languages? as a story · 52 points
HN discussionThis blog post makes the opposite assertion: http://blog.vmsplice.net/2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c... Most security bugs in qemu have been C programming bugs, like a NULL pointer dereference.
Comment linking /2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c-to-rust.html
on “C will never stop you from making mistakes”Submitted Understanding Peer-to-Peer Git Forges with Radicle as a story · 41 points
HN discussionYou have good reason to be wary, it is added complexity that should not be taken lightly. The reason to pay this cost is that the alternatives are: (1) do nothing: keep developing solely in C, (2) rewrite the big C project in Rust in its entirety. The cost of option (1) is significant: memory safety errors contribute to 70% of defects not detected by test [1]. Even with static+dynamic checking tools, developers keep…
Comment linking /2020/08/why-qemu-should-move-from-c-to-rust.html
on “Integrating Rust into the Android Open Source Project”Submitted Comparing VIRTIO, NVMe, and io_uring queue designs as a story · 34 points
HN discussionQEMU is another one that I know of: http://blog.vmsplice.net/2014/01/coroutines-in-qemu-basics.h... Coroutines seem like the type of concept that relatively few programmers understand and use, but when they are used well, it can simplify the code flow greatly.
Comment linking /2014/01/coroutines-in-qemu-basics.html
on “Coroutines in C with Arbitrary Arguments”Submitted My performance benchmarking workflow as a story · 29 points
HN discussionStefan Hajnoczi has a nice summary: http://blog.vmsplice.net/2019/04/whats-new-in-virtio-11.html
Comment linking /2019/04/whats-new-in-virtio-11.html
on “Virtual I/O Device (Virtio) Version 1.1”Submitted QEMU should move from C to Rust as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> But now it's been tamed and there's also passt, a much higher performance and much more secure implementation of user-mode networking In case anyone else needs a link: http://blog.vmsplice.net/2021/10/a-new-approach-to-usermode-...
Comment linking /2021/10/a-new-approach-to-usermode-networking.html
on “Virtual Machine as a Core Android Primitive”Submitted Profiling tools I use for QEMU storage performance optimization as a story · 4 points
HN discussionpasst (the network stack that you might be using if you're running qemu, or podman containers) also has no dynamic memory allocations. I always thought it's quite an interesting achievement. https://blog.vmsplice.net/2021/10/a-new-approach-to-usermode... https://passt.top/passt/about/#security
Comment linking /2021/10/a-new-approach-to-usermode-networking.html
on “WolfIP: Lightweight TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations”Submitted Git: Internals of how objects are stored as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing a C Library in Rust as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Evolution of File Descriptor Monitoring in Linux as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why learning the Vim text editor is worth it as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted An introduction to GDB scripting in Python as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Determining why a Linux syscall failed as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted My favorite software engineering books as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's New in Virtio 1.4 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Storage literature notes on free space management and snapshots as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A new approach to usermode networking with passt as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Call for QEMU Advent Calendar 2020 disk images as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why CPU Utilization Metrics Are Confusing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Common disk benchmarking mistakes as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
