Linux's V4L2 VP9 Codec Kernel Code Rewritten In Rust For Better Memory Safety

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux's V4L2 VP9 Codec Kernel Code Rewritten In Rust For Better Memory Safety

Daniel Almeida with Collabora has posted a rewritten of the VP9 codec library code within the Linux kernel's Video 4 Linux 2 (V4L2) subsystem. In using Rust rather than the existing C code, this should yield better memory safety and better fend off potential issues within the existing code...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/VP9-Linux-Kernel-Rust-V4L2-RFC

[Shnatsel]

Considering the terrible track record of both software and hardware video decoders when it comes to memory safety vulnerabilities, this is sorely needed, and I am excited to see it happen!

[hedonist]

This is amazing, im glad the kernel is slowly being rewritten in rust for memory safety, this is amazing news.

[Quackdoc]

last time i looked into v4l2 code it was far too much for me, with rust being a much more beginner friendly language I hope this bodes well for the future

[darkonix]

This is amazing, im glad the kernel is slowly being rewritten in rust for memory safety, this is amazing news.

That's not exactly what's happening. The Linux kernel is not being rewritten in Rust at this time. Some new drivers are being developed in Rust and a few are being rewritten in Rust.

[Quackdoc]

That's not exactly what's happening. The Linux kernel is not being rewritten in Rust at this time. Some new drivers are being developed in Rust and a few are being rewritten in Rust.

I think that would be considered being slowly rewritten in rust, since components are being re-written in rust

[jacob]

I didn't know there were video codecs implemented within the kernel.

[oleid]

That's essentially what Frederico did with librsvg. It's a valid approach. It makes sure it doesn't break the ABI and thus you've always something to test against.

https://viruta.org/docs/fmq-refactoring-c-to-rust.pdf

[emansom]

Media codecs shouldn't be in the kernel in the first place. Unless i'm misunderstanding and this is only about special hardware devices to offload the decoding/encoding to.

Even then, better to keep the kernel interface as simple as possible and move all the codec specific handling to userspace Mesa.

[Volta]

This is amazing, im glad the kernel is slowly being rewritten in rust for memory safety, this is amazing news.

What's so amazing? Rust is far from maturity of C and code written in Rust is much harder to read and follow IMO. I'm waiting for large project written in Rust to see if it's really capable of replacing C. So far there are only tiny projects which are doing simple tasks. I'd love to see PostgreSQL equivalent. It's so much hype and promises about Rust, but nothing interesting to see so far. The order should be different.