Converting the Kernel to C++

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  • fish-shell

    The user-friendly command line shell.

  • A recent practical example of the former: the fish shell re-wrote incrementally from C++ to Rust, and is almost finished https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/discussions/10123

    An example of the latter: c2rust, which is a work in progress but is very impressive https://github.com/immunant/c2rust

    It currently translates into unsafe Rust, but the strategy is to separate the "compile C to unsafe Rust" steps and the "compile unsafe Rust to safe Rust" steps. As I see it, as it makes the overall task simpler, allows for more user freedom, and makes the latter potentially useful even for non-transpiled code. https://immunant.com/blog/2023/03/lifting/

  • c2rust

    Migrate C code to Rust

  • A recent practical example of the former: the fish shell re-wrote incrementally from C++ to Rust, and is almost finished https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/discussions/10123

    An example of the latter: c2rust, which is a work in progress but is very impressive https://github.com/immunant/c2rust

    It currently translates into unsafe Rust, but the strategy is to separate the "compile C to unsafe Rust" steps and the "compile unsafe Rust to safe Rust" steps. As I see it, as it makes the overall task simpler, allows for more user freedom, and makes the latter potentially useful even for non-transpiled code. https://immunant.com/blog/2023/03/lifting/

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  • gcc

  • Somewhat related: In 2020 gcc bumped the requirement for bootstrapping to be a C++11 compiler [0]. Would have been fun to see the kernel finally adopt C++14 as the author suggested.

    I don't think that Linus will allow this since he just commented that he will allow rust in drivers and major subsystems [1].

    I do found it pretty funny that even Linus is also not writing any rust code, but is reading rust code.

    I would have hoped see more answers or see something in here from actual kernel developers.

    0: https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/commit/5329b59a2e13dabbe20...

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