Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC] Rust

[Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>]

[...]
> >  - The use of outside library code: Historically, C code was either
> >    written for userspace or the kernel, and not both. But that's not
> >    particularly true in Rust land (and getting to be less true even in C
> >    land); should we consider some sort of structure or (cough) package
> >    management? Is it time to move beyond ye olde cut-and-paste?
> 
> Rust has a package manager.  I don't think we need kCargo.  I'm not
> deep enough in the weeds on this to make sensible suggestions, but if
> a package (eg a crypto suite or compression library) doesn't depend on
> anything ridiculous then what's the harm in just pulling it in?
> 

If we are talking about using a external library in kernel, then one of
the concerns is aduitting/reviewing external dependencies I think.

However I just want to point another way that userspace and kernel can
share the code: we can put the Rust code in kernel, and pulish it as
a crate (https://crates.io/) so that userspace can use. This would be
ideal for things like on-disk layout for filesystems for example, where
we maintain the data structure in kernel source code, and userspace can
use the same code directly. Probably this is not what Kent asked for
though ;-)

Regards,
Boqun