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Comment by ekidd | Hacker News Reader

For whatever it might be worth...

Looking at the comment thread, at least one person I recognize as a core maintainer seems to be acting as if this is an official plan that they've already agreed on the outline of, if not the exact timing. And they seem to acknowledge that this breaks some of the more obscure platforms out there.

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Interesting! I'd certainly say that's worth something. Definitely didn't expect it though given how poorly some people have reacted to Rust being introduced as an optional part of the Linux kernel.

It's a lot more understandable for developer tooling like Git to more quickly adopt newer system requirements. Something like the Linux kernel needs to be conservative because it's part of many people's bootstrapping process.

rustc_codegen_gcc is close to becoming stable, and conversely the Linux kernel is dropping more esoteric architectures. Once the supported sets of architectures fully overlap, and once the Linux kernel no longer needs unstable (nightly-only) Rust features, it'd be more reasonable for Linux to depend on Rust for more than just optional drivers.

I would also say that it’s a lot easier to learn to write rust when you’re writing something that runs sequentially on a single core in userspace as opposed to something like the Linux kernel. Having dipped my toes in rust that seems very approachable. When you start doing async concurrency is when the learning curve becomes steep.

I've found that when you're doing concurrency, Rust makes things easier, and it becomes simpler to get right.

However, adapting the conventions and mechanisms of a large complex C system like the Linux kernel to Rust is taking time.

Those footguns still exist in C, they’re just invisible bugs in your code. The Rust compiler is correct to point them out as bad architecture, even if it’s annoying to keep fighting the compiler.

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