Rust Takes A Major Step Forward As Linux's Second Official Language
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It wasn't that long ago that the very idea that another language besides C would be used in the Linux kernel would have been laughed at. Things have changed. Today, not only is Rust, the high-level system language moving closer to Linux, it's closer than ever with the next "patch series to add support for Rust as a second language to the Linux kernel."
The biggest change in these new packages is that the Rust code proposed for the kernel now relies on the stable Rust compiler rather than the beta compilers. Going forward, Rust on Linux will be migrating every time a new stable Rust compiler is released. Currently, it's using Rust 1.57.0.
By doing this, as Linux kernel and lead Rust on Linux, developer Miguel Ojeda, put it, "By upgrading the compiler, we have been able to take off the list a few unstable features we were using." This, in turn, means Rust on Linux will be more stable.
Looking ahead, Ojeda wrote, "We will keep upgrading until we do not rely on any unstable features; at which point we may want to start declaring a minimum Rust version is supported like it is done, e.g. GCC and Clang.
Senior Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman had told me he believes "drivers are probably the first place for" Rust to appear in Linux since "they are the 'end leaves' of the tree of dependencies in the kernel source. They depend on core kernel functionality, but nothing depends on them."
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