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> hard do folks think it would be to make a C -> Rust transpiler Easy. But it won't be too useful. Rust isn't a compiler that magically finds memory errors. T
by Manishearth 11y ago
> hard do folks think it would be to make a C -> Rust transpiler
Easy. But it won't be too useful.
Rust isn't a compiler that magically finds memory errors. Transpiling C code to Rust will not find those memory errors unless you have a really good transpiler that can detect the overall structure and design of the C code. It will just give you a ton of Rust error messages; probably none of which relate to an actual memory error. (Or you transpile to `unsafe` rust, in which case, what was the point?).
Rust works with a set of rules, and these rules enforce some things in your programming/software design style. This enforced style (i.e. the discipline around memory usage) is what gets us memory safety. This style is not the same as the style used in programming C/C++; so a dumb transpilation won't work. You need to write a transpiler that can figure out what logic the code (and not just for a function, for a larger unit) was trying to encode, and write that in Rust. That's ... a nontrivial problem to solve with a transpiler, probably requiring AI skills. It's a mostly trivial thing to do as a human, since mostly such "transpilation" involves noticing a few key issues (related to highly-shared structs and whatnot) and fixing them (leaving most of the code the same).