The Linux Kernel Prepares For Rust 1.77 Upgrade

With Linux 6.8 the kernel's Rust code was brought up to Rust 1.75 while new patches posted this weekend port the code over to Rust 1.76 and then the upcoming Rust 1.77.

Posted on Saturday was this patch series taking the kernel's Rust infrastructure up to Rust 1.76 compatibility. That was immediately followed by the Rust 1.77 patch for that yet to be released as stable toolchain. With Rust 1.77 they have now stabilized the single-field "offset_of" feature used by the kernel's Rust code. Rust 1.77 also adds a "--check-cfg" option that the Rust kernel code will likely transition to in the future.

This follows the Rust for Linux policy of tracking the upstream Rust version upgrades until there is a minimum version that can be declared where all used features are considered stable. At that unknown point in the future, the minimum version will be declared as noted in their version policy.

This upgrading to Rust 1.77 will likely take place for the upcoming Linux 6.9 kernel merge window.