cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25857381
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
Rust is straight up better than C. It’s safer and less prone to errors.
It’s not feasible to convert the entire Linux codebase at once. So your options are to either have a mixed codebase, or stick with effectively Cobol into 2020.
Rust is great, but you are not thinking from a long-term project perspective. Rust is safer, but Linux needs to be maintainable or it dies.
Based on what you’re saying, the only way its going to reasonably be converted to Rust is if someone forks Linux and matches all the changes they’re making in C as they happen but converts it all to Rust. Once its all converted and maintainability has been proven, a merge request would need to be made.
I can’t fathom how do you mean Rust is not maintainable. If anything for a new programmer C code is much more mind boggling than Rust.
Writing in Rust might make it much more maintainable.
See this is the problem with Rust people, they always misconstrue you saying “mixing two languages together makes a project less maintainable” to mean “Rust is unmaintainable” if Rust is the second language.
This is why the disagreement between Hector and Christoph happened in the first place.
Do better, reddit_sux