Rust is a language that forces you to do things in a way that makes code more robust at the cost of a little upfront thought and inconvenience.

The parent comment is complaining that Rust will make kernel dev too hard? Are they joking? It is already complicated.

I would rather see a more formally constructed language used for the kernel than risk adding more C-related bugs.

The OP might be ok with a Kernel that was just in Rust, but having a kernel witha mix of Rust and C adds complexity, both in having to master two languages to understand it well, and a more complex build system.

exactly

What's so bad in having to know two languages for developing drivers? Especially when knowing the second one will rid you of all memory safety bugs just because your code compiles.

And to call Rust's build system is laughable. Issuing `cargo build` could not be simpler (and it includes automatic downloading of dependencies, too).

> It is already complicated

And specifically, one of the ways in which it is complicated is that it's mostly done in a language that doesn't natively enforce memory-safe constructs, forcing developers to walk a best-practices and tooling tightrope to avoid writing code that breaks.

Why the heck is this comment grey?! At least reply and explain where they are wrong?

you know what they say - something about nature creating a better fool

You mean like not incorporating formal verification theories? Yeah: fools, all of 'em.

the kernel and linux is about many important issues, not about chasing the latest language fad

That's your misconception: you believe Rust is a fad. And there's also nothing "latest" about it; it's 10 years old.

it is already complicated. so i don’t want to learn another language. i want to become BETTER at using what is there, not have a language forced onto me. i want to make my tool set smaller, not learn more tools.

also, being able to use linux in an embedded system as a resource constrained developer is hugely important today. adding more tools means more dev cost.

> i want to make my tool set smaller, not learn more tools.

Ouch. Good luck with that.

Sounds like it's time to exit programming, buddy, because the world has some very bad news for you. Yeah, you'll have to keep learning tools. It's included in the big paycheck.

There is also so much to rust that makes it nearly ideal for the prospect of writing a driver.

For example, how many bytes are in an `int`? What is the endianess of your 32bit `int`?

Rust puts up front a lot of the information crucial for cross platform development of hardware drivers.

Rust has few undefined edges which is exactly where C gets into trouble. C, by design, has a bunch of undefined edges.

Honestly, the biggest downside to Rust in the kernel is that Rust is backed by the LLVM, which doesn't have as many supported targets as GCC does. (And, AFAIK, GCC is generally the preferred compiler for the kernel).

> Honestly, the biggest downside to Rust in the kernel is that Rust is backed by the LLVM, which doesn't have as many supported targets as GCC does. (And, AFAIK, GCC is generally the preferred compiler for the kernel).

Fortunately, there are now two competing approach to make GCC a viable compiler to Rust[1], and it's moving really fast. I think the LLVM-only situation won't get in the way more than a few more years.

[1]: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/871283/c437c1364397e70e/

> For example, how many bytes are in an `int`?

Rust and Linux both have the same name for say the 32-bit unsigned integer type, they both call that u32. This is of course a coincidence, and not an unlikely one, but it probably doesn't hurt for Linux people getting familiar with Rust.