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Because everyone loooves Rust, you'd be glad to know that this is the first Linux release with initial Rust support, so Rust is officially in the kernel now and
by capableweb 4y ago
Because everyone loooves Rust, you'd be glad to know that this is the first Linux release with initial Rust support, so Rust is officially in the kernel now and will run on bunch of computers shortly, no matter if you want it to or not (granted you run a Linux kernel of course).
> Among the key highlights for Linux 6.1 are the initial Rust infrastructure has been merged
https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-61-features https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-61-features
- nequo 4y ago> Rust is officially in the kernel now and will run on bunch of computers shortly, no matter if you want it to or not To me as a user, what difference does it make if the binary that I run was compiled from Rust, not from C? It is machine code.
- biorach 4y agoAs a user of the kernel, none, right now. Long term there should be some improvement in reliability and security, if things work out as planned.
- jjnoakes 4y agoI also think it will bring faster development and easier testing.
- howinteresting 4y agoAnd a new generation of developers who have found C too intimidating to write code in.
- jacobr1 4y agoI don't think that is the problem. Rather it turns out everybody has been naive in thinking you can actually successfully manage memory, or other shared resourced in C without footgunning yourself.
- howinteresting 4y agoThose are definitely related but distinct. The fact is that many younger developers will simply (for this and other reasons) refuse to contribute to a C (or C++) project, but happily do so to a Rust project.
- mike_hock 4y agoI trust Linus to keep the shitty contributions out (and lambast contributors if necessary).
- xslvrxslwt 4y agoNo worries, that's only natural, especially for Linus, after all he's the one that said "if keeping C for the sole purpose of not letting C++ "devs" contribute - so be it" lol (and thanks him for that)
- billfruit 4y agoAlso does this lead to an increase in dependencies for building the kernel? How about building it for older hardware?
- LoganDark 4y ago> Rust is officially in the kernel now and will run on bunch of computers shortly, no matter if you want it to or not I believe Rust is only used for a few kernel modules at the moment.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago> will run on bunch of computers shortly, no matter if you want it to or not (granted you run a Linux kernel of course). Probably not. The Rust support merged in 6.1 was only the bare minimum of infrastructure needed to write kernel modules in Rust, there's no modules in the kernel that actually use Rust yet. You need to explicitly enable the Rust infrastructure with a config option during compilation, and e.g. Debian doesn't do that yet (why would they?).
- seanw444 4y agoOther than the headline of "Rust kernel module mainlined" I don't know what this entails. Do you need the entire rustc/cargo toolchain to compile this portion of the kernel? Or have they implemented some Rust compiler in gcc that it uses?