this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Linux royalty backs adoption of Rust for kernel code (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/technology
56 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Greg Kroah-Hartman... urged fellow contributors to embrace those interested in contributing Rust code to improve the kernel.

"Adding another language really shouldn't be a problem... embrace the people offering to join us

Thoughts on this?

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[–] farcaster 42 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Moving from C to C++ would also not solve any real problem. C++ of course adds OOP which I think can be nice (not everyone agrees with this!) but it also adds an insane amount of language complexity and instability. Mentally reasoning about C code is hard, reasoning about C++ code is nearly impossible.

Rust however brings a novel solution to classes of problems like ownership and mutability with the borrow checker. It's now accepted to be a great tool for writing high performance code while preventing a substantial amount of common, but often subtle, bugs from slipping through. It's not arbitrarily the first non-C code to be accepted in the kernel. And it's used in other operating systems like Android and Windows already.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

In general, for me, Rust > C > C++.

I've heard people say that C is like a loaded and cocked revolver, and if you're not careful, you could blow your foot off, whereas C++ is like a loaded and cocked sawed-off shotgun, and if you're not careful, you could blow your leg off.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

C++ is a semi automatic shotgun with 200 barrels pointing in all directions.

[–] gedhrel 3 points 9 hours ago

Whilst it's gotten a lot better in the -17 and -20 iterations, the fact that there was recently a doorstop book published solely on the subject of C++ initialisation semantics is pretty telling.

I really like what Herb Sutter's doing around cppfront; I still wouldn't use C++ unless I absolutely had to.

[–] brucethemoose 13 points 1 day ago

Mostly this ^.

There's just not really demand for C++ in the kernel; that's not the case with Rust.

[–] mesamunefire 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I think rust would also bring in more developers. So more changes would eventually make its way into the kernel.