Re: Rust kernel policy

Jason Gunthorpe
2025-02-20T16:04:30Z

On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 07:53:28AM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> C++ standard committee recently AND the proposal from Google about
> Carbon, a way to evolve a C++ codebase into something else that is
> maintainable and better overall. I recommend reading at least the
> introduction here:
> https://docs.carbon-lang.dev/
> for details, and there are many other summaries like this one that go
> into more:
> https://herecomesthemoon.net/2025/02/carbon-is-not-a-language/

That resonates with me alot more than the Rust experiment does:

Carbon is a concentrated experimental effort to develop tooling that
will facilitate automated large-scale long-term migrations of
existing C++ code to a modern, well-annotated programming language
with a modern, transparent process of evolution and governance
model.
[..]
Many so-called "successor languages" are nothing like
this. They don't make automated code migration an explicit
goal, and generally build a layer of abstraction on top of or rely on
their host language.

This approach provides a vision where the entire kernel could be
piece-by-piece mostly-mechanically converted from C into Carbon and
then hand touched up bit by bit to have better safety. It is so much
more compatible with our existing processes and social order. A single
language outcome after tremendous effort.

It is shame it isn't v1.0 right now, and may never work out, but it
sure is a much more compelling vision.

Jason