Linux 6.13 Hits A "Tipping Point" With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon

In addition to the USB updates and big staging flush merged yesterday for the Linux 6.13 kernel merge window, the "char/misc" pull was also honored for that catch-all of various kernel changes. With the char/misc pull there are some notable additions for those wanting to write kernel drivers within the Rust programming language.

Greg Kroah-Hartman noted that with these changes for Linux 6.13, it's now possible to make more Rust-based kernel drivers possible. Greg explained in the char/misc pull:

"rust misc driver bindings and other rust changes to make misc drivers actually possible. I think this is the tipping point, expect to see way more rust drivers going forward now that these bindings are present. Next merge window hopefully we will have pci and platform drivers working, which will fully enable almost all driver subsystems to start accepting (or at least getting) rust drivers. This is the end result of a lot of work from a lot of people, congrats to all of them for getting this far, you've proved many of us wrong in the best way possible, working code :)"

The veteran kernel developer believes we're at a tipping point of seeing more upstream Rust drivers ahead. The full list of char/misc changes can be found via this pull request.

These Rust char/misc changes are on top of the main Rust pull for Linux 6.13 that brought 3k lines of code for providing more Rust infrastructure. Linux 6.13 separately is also bringing Rust file abstractions.

The Linux 6.13 merge window is expected to end tomorrow, 1 December, with the release of Linux 6.13-rc1. Linux 6.13 is shaping up to be a very big kernel step forward and will be out as stable around the end of January.