The Rust in Linux debate is over. Implementation has started. “Unless something weird happens, he [Rust] will be integrated into version 6.1”, confirmed Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, interviewed by ZDNet. The entry of the Rust programming language into the Linux kernel has been planned for some time. In 2020, developers started considering using the Rust language for Linux’s new inline code. Google, which supports Rust for Android development — itself a Linux distribution — began pushing for Rust to be integrated into the Linux kernel in April 2021.
As Wedson Almeida Filho of Google’s Android team said at the time, “We believe Rust is now ready to join C as a practical language for kernel implementation. It can help us reduce the number of potential bugs and security vulnerabilities in privileged code while playing nicely with the core core and preserving its performance characteristics.”
However, it took some time to convince the main developers of the Linux kernel. Some feared that non-standard Rust extensions were needed to make it work on Linux. For example, with Rust Linux’s new NVMe driver, more than 70 extensions had to be made to Rust for it to work.
An important first step
This issue was still relevant at the Linux Kernel Maintainers Summit. It was finally decided that Rust is sufficiently well supported by Clang – the front-end of the C language family’s compiler – to move forward. “Clang works, so merging Rust would probably help and not harm the kernel,” Linus Torvalds had previously said.
The fact that Rust on Linux has become much more mature has also helped Rust. Also, Andreas Hindborg, Principal Engineer at Western Digital, showed that it is possible to write a top-notch driver, an NVM-Express (NVMe) SSD driver for Linux in Rust. Maintainers were convinced it was time to move forward with Rust in Linux. In short, they agreed that Rust on Linux was ready to go.
The only downside: Linus Torvalds however warned that in this first version, Rust will have “just the basic infrastructure (i.e. no serious use cases yet)”. This remains, however, an important first step for Rust and Linux.
Source: ZDNet.com