Experimental Patches For Rust-Written Linux Network Drivers

A new set of patches this weekend begin laying the groundwork for Rust abstractions for Linux network device drivers so that Rust code can be used for constructing new network device drivers. The patches also include a dummy Rust network driver.

Longtime kernel developer Fujita Tomonori sent out a set of patches on Sunday providing the Rust abstractions for network device drivers plus the initial Rust dummy driver to help in reviewing this early code. So far no actual hardware device driver for Rust in the networking subsystem has been published.

The 800 lines of new Rust code for the Linux kernel were posted to rust-for-linux for an early round of review prior to bringing it up with the broader Linux networking development community.

There continues to be a lot of different Rust work happening for the mainline Linux kernel while so far merged is just a lot of infrastructure work, subsystem abstractions, and more while waiting for any notable Rust'ed drivers -- like the Apple DRM kernel driver -- to be ready for upstreaming.