Linux Kernel Gets More Infrastructure for Rust, Increasing Interest in the Language

Linux 6.1 (released last month) included what Linus Torvalds described as "initial Rust scaffolding," remembers this update from SD Times But now, "work has already been done since the 6.1 release to add more infrastructure for Rust in the kernel, though still none of the code interacts with any C code."

The director of advocacy and operations for the Rust Foundation said that there is no actual Rust code in Linux. Before you can write real code in Rust for the Linux kernel, you have to get that done. Linux is going to be doing this in a piecemeal way so they can see how it works over time. As people are seeing that it's actually kind of working out, you'll be able to write Linux drivers or whatever with Rust, so I would imagine that over the next year, you're going to see more small incremental changes to the kernels with Rust. A vote of confidence in the Rust programming language is what the Rust Foundation's executive director says about adding Rust to the kernels. She said that in the past other languages have been planned to make their way into the kernels, but didn't get put in. "I think having someone with the kind of intellectual gravity of Linus Torvalds saying 'No,' that kind of says an awful lot about how reliable Rust is and how much potential there is for the future as well," she said. Rumbul thinks that there will be an increase in interest in the language, which is still relatively new compared to other languages. It will seem like an attractive prospect to a lot of people that are looking to develop their skills and their knowledge since Rust is now in the kernels. Some of the less popular roles within open source are very important to the health of a language.

The Rust Foundation also launched a new security team in September to ensure best practices (including a dedicated security engineer). Their first initiative will be a security audit and threat modeling exercises. "We want to basically shore up," Rust operations director Marcey tells SD Times, "to ensure that Rust itself is actually as secure as we always say it is."

A majority of developers said they love Rust.