linux-kernel - Re: Rust kernel policy

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Message-ID: <89f2547edcaaba53d9965cab9133d809607330ac.camel@kernel.org>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:13:52 +0200
From: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@...nel.org>
To: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@....org>, Steven Rostedt
 <rostedt@...dmis.org>,  Jason Gunthorpe	 <jgg@...dia.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>, Miguel Ojeda
 <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@...il.com>,  Christoph Hellwig	 <hch@...radead.org>,
 rust-for-linux <rust-for-linux@...r.kernel.org>, Linus Torvalds
 <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
 David Airlie	 <airlied@...il.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 ksummit@...ts.linux.dev
Subject: Re: Rust kernel policy

On Wed, 2025-02-19 at 12:52 -0800, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> On 2/19/25 12:46 PM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > I do feel that new drivers written in Rust would help with the
> > vulnerabilities that new drivers usually add to the kernel.
> 
> For driver developers it is easier to learn C than to learn Rust. I'm
> not sure that all driver developers, especially the "drive by"
> developers, have the skills to learn Rust.

IMHO, Rust is not that difficult to learn but it is difficult to
run.

One point of difficulty for me still is the QA part, not really the
code. QuickStart discusses on how to install all the shenanigans
with distribution package managers.

The reality of actual kernel development is that you almost never
compile/run host-to-host, rendering that part of the documentation
in the battlefield next to useless.

Instead it should have instructions for BuildRoot, Yocto and
perhaps NixOS (via podman). It should really explain this instead
of dnf/apt-get etc.

> 
> Bart.
> 

BR, Jarkko