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> Rust won't replace C in the kernel, but I do think we will see tooling for our network clients, file indexing and perhaps even version control slowly switchin
by bluejekyll 6y ago
> Rust won't replace C in the kernel, but I do think we will see tooling for our network clients, file indexing and perhaps even version control slowly switching languages (if they still rely on C, that is).
Do you mean the Linux kernel, XNU, Free/Net/OpenBSD, or other existing kernel's? There are plenty of examples of folks successfully building kernels in Rust. The likely hood of any of the major kernels adopting it (beyond drivers) is probably low. I expect the only reason that would happen is if any of the folks behind those kernels decide that they actively want to migrate the entire thing away from C in the long-run.
Ground up new kernels in Rust are very feasible, though. Will any of those attract the community and contribution that we see in Linux? That's unlikely, but it's not impossible, as your comment implies.
- jeroenhd 6y agoI'm not saying it's impossible to create a Kernel in Rust, but I don't think Linux or any of the BSDs will switch to anything other than C for their primary kernel development language. The only option for kernels that are mostly Rust I can see is a ground-up kernel, but those rarely succeed if ever. There's been small kernels in C# for a while now, for example, but those are usually no more than a fun experiment. Fuchsia is the closest thing to a completely new kernel that I can think of and despite its age and the amount of people working on it, it's not used outside of lab environments. Perhaps in ten or twenty years a new kernel will replace Linux, and that might very well be written in Rust.