this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Behold, a Linux maintainer openly admitting to attempting to sabotage the entire Rust for Linux project:

https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250131075751.GA16720@lst.de/

The good news is this doesn't affect drm/asahi, our GPU driver. The bad news is it does affect all the other drivers we're (re)writing in Rust, two so far with a third one coming.

Another choice quote, calling R4L "cancer": https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250128092334.GA28548@lst.de/

Personally, I would consider this grounds for removal of Christoph from the Linux project on Code of Conduct violation grounds, but sadly I doubt much will happen other than draining a lot of people's energy and will to continue the project until Linus says "fuck you" or something.

As for how to move forward, if I were one of the Rust maintainers, I would just merge the patch (which does not touch code formally maintained by the dissenter). Either Linus takes the pull, and whatever Christoph says is irrelevant, or he doesn't, and R4L dies. Everything else is a waste of everyone's time and energy.

Edit: Sent in my 2 cents: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2b9b75d1-eb8e-494a-b05f-59f75c92e6ae@marcan.st/T/#m1944b6d485070970e359bbc7baa71b04c86a30af

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[–] gencha@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I believe writing the pure kernel is doable in time, but Linux has a ton of drivers, also implemented in C. I also believe it's not unreasonable to assume that those are the source of most of the issues that Rust would solve. I'm nowhere close to actual kernel development myself though either.

Migrating such a huge, complex code base over however as much time to a different language seems completely unrealistic to me though. What you're saying is right. It makes more sense to keep a pure C Linux kernel and work on a replacement in parallel. No matter how great a new language is, you can't expect an entire community of seasoned contributors to adopt it. It's unreasonable