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Comment by gizmondo | Hacker News Reader

For it to be bait and switch someone should've said "Rust will forever be only for drivers". Has anyone from the Linux leadership or R4L people done that? To my knowledge it has always been "for now".

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"But for new code / drivers..." encompasses more than just "drivers" and refers to all new code. I doubt it's a mistake either due to the way the rest of the email is written. And Greg said "no one sane ever thought that (force anyone to learn rust)" just 5 months ago (https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/8/29/312). But he is now telling his C devs they will need to learn and code rust to make new code in the kernel.

> But he is now telling his C devs they will need to learn and code rust to make new code in the kernel.

I don't think this is accurate, Rust is still totally optional. Also, the Rust folks are supposed to fix Rust code whenever it breaks due to changes on the C side. If they fail to do this, the newly-broken Rust code is supposed to be excluded from the build - up to and including not building any Rust at all.

Yes, I know the policy that has been stated and the recent docs on it (https://rust-for-linux.com/rust-kernel-policy). A good portion of the R4L group were trying to avoid this scenario due the toxicity of such a change (especially at this early contentious point, and despite what their online advocates want). I don't think the policy will immediatly change because of his statements, but I find it pretty clear that this is where he wants the project to go.

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