Re: Rust kernel policy

Kees Cook
2025-02-19T19:18:03Z

On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 02:08:21PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:52:37 -0800
> Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> > In other words, I don't see any reason to focus on replacing existing
> > code -- doing so would actually carry a lot of risk. But writing *new*
> > stuff in Rust is very effective. Old code is more stable and has fewer
> > bugs already, and yet, we're still going to continue the work of hardening
> > C, because we still need to shake those bugs out. But *new* code can be
> > written in Rust, and not have any of these classes of bugs at all from
> > day one.
>
> I would say *new drivers* than say *new code*. A lot of new code is written
> in existing infrastructure that doesn't mean it needs to be converted over
> to rust.

Sorry, yes, I was more accurate in the first paragraph. :)

> But that does show why enhancements to C like the guard() code is still
> very important.

Absolutely!

--
Kees Cook