Rust for Linux

Initial releaseOctober 1, 2022; 23 months ago (2022-10-01)Repositorygithub.com/Rust-for-Linux/linuxWritten inRustOperating systemLinuxAvailable inEnglishLicenseGPL-2.0-only with Linux-syscall-note.Websitehttps://rust-for-linux.com/

Rust for Linux is an ongoing project started in 2020 to add Rust as a programming language that can be used within the Linux kernel software, which has been written using C and assembly only. This project aims to leverage Rust's memory safety to reduce bugs when writing kernel drivers.^[1] Progress has been slower than hoped by both Rust advocates and Linus Torvalds, lead of the Linux kernel project.^[2] In December 2023 the first drivers written in Rust were accepted, and released in version 6.8.^[3][4]

The Linux kernel has been primarily written in C and assembly languages since its first release in 1991. Around 1997, the addition of C++ was considered and experimented upon for two weeks before being scrapped.^[5] Rust was created in 2006 and combines the performance of low-level programming languages (such as C) with a focus on memory safety and a user-friendly tool set and syntax.^[6]

An example Linux external loadable kernel module created using the Rust language was published by Taesoo Kim in 2013.^[7][8]

The Rust for Linux project was announced in 2020 in the Linux kernel mailing list with goal of adding Rust as a programming language that could be used within the Linux project.^[9] At the Open Source Summit 2022, Linus Torvalds stated that the incorporation of the project's work could begin as soon as the Linux 5.20 release, later named as Linux 6.0.^[10] The first release candidate for Linux 6.0 was created on 14 August 2022, without Rust support. In the release notes for Linux 6.0-rc1, Torvalds expressed his intention for adding Rust support, "I actually was hoping that we'd get some of the first rust infrastructure, and the multi-gen LRU VM, but neither of them happened this time around."^[11][12] On 19 September 2022, an article from ZDNet revealed an email from Linus Torvalds stating that "Unless something odd happens, it [Rust] will make it into 6.1".^[13]

In October 2022, a pull request for accepting the implementation for Rust for Linux was approved by Torvalds.^[14] As of Linux 6.1, support was intentionally left minimal in order to allow developers to test the feature.^[15]

Rust for Linux developers created a new library "pinned-init" to safely and fallibly initialize memory that must not be relocated.^[3] It was first included in Linux 6.4,^[16] and been improved in latter versions.^[3]

Linux 6.10 included RISCV processor architecture support for Rust.^[17]

In July 2024 a change was accepted into Linux to support multiple Rust versions for the first time, allowing compiling using both 1.78 (Released 2 May, 2024) and 1.79 (Released 13 June, 2024).^[18]

As of August 2024^[update], Rust for Linux depends on unstable features of the Rust compiler.^[1]

Linux kernel contains the following Rust components:

• rnull, a drop-in replacement for the null block device driver^[3][19]
• Asix AX88772A and Realtek Generic FE-GE physical layer network drivers^{[3][4][20][21]}

Drivers scheduled for inclusion in Linux kernel:

• QR code DRM panic handler^[18]

Other notable projects using Rust in Linux include:

• tarfs, a tar filesystem^[3][22]
• NVMe device driver^[3]
• Android Binder IPC driver^[9][3][23]
• Asahi Linux's Apple silicon AGX GPU DRM driver^[24][3][25]
• PuzzleFS, a container filesystem^[3][26][22]
• Read-only Ext2 filesystem^[22]
• Nova, intended to create a Rust nouveau Nvidia GPU driver, is being developed on the Freedesktop project infrastructure^[27][28]

• LynxOS
• Redox OS