Rust For The Linux Kernel Sent Out For Review A Fourth Time

Miguel Ojeda just sent out the fourth revision of the Rust programming language support for use within the Linux kernel. This optional Rust programming support for Linux kernel drivers and the likes continues maturing and this year will hopefully see mainline status.

With this weekend's Rust for Linux v4 patches the Rust kernel modules can remove some boilerplate code with certain Crate attributes no longer needed, Rust coding guidelines around code comments and code documentation have been added, and there have been some refinements to the Rust kernel abstractions and the example driver code. More of the Linux kernel continuous integration (CI) systems have also been preparing for building/testing the Rust code within the Linux kernel.

Not that kind of rust... But it will soon be possible to make use of the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel.

As for the current state of Rust programming within the Linux kernel, Miguel Ojeda commented, "The Rust support is still to be considered experimental. However, support is good enough that kernel developers can start working on the Rust abstractions for subsystems and write drivers and other modules."

At the moment adding the Rust programming language infrastructure to the kernel along with some sample code amounts to 34k lines of new code.

The new Rust for Linux patch series can be found on the kernel mailing list.