Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] Evaluating Rust for XArray

[Andreas Hindborg <a.hindborg@kernel.org>]

"Matthew Wilcox" <willy@infradead.org> writes:

> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 03:28:45PM +0100, Daniel Gomez wrote:
>> We propose a topic to discuss the potential use of Rust in core Linux
>> kernel data structures.
>
> This is premature?  We can't move the pagecache or swap over to use Rust
> until we can compile Rust for m68k/parisc/alpha/... or we drop those
> architectures from the tree.

I disagree that this is premature. And I don't think Daniel is
suggesting we swap anything over at this time. Doing this work is not
the same as swapping anything over.

We don't have to wait 5-10 years for gcc to fully support Rust, before
we start playing with this. We can, and should, start evaluating if we
can deploy Rust in this area now. We might find that we are lacking
something from the Rust language to do what we want. We can work with
the Rust developers to make sure that the Rust language gets all the
bells and whistles that it needs, to support the use cases we have for
the Linux kernel. I think this would benefit everyone. Let's get in
early and help shape the language, rather than board in 10 years when
everything is settled and much more difficult to change.

On the other hand, we might also find that no, Rust does not work for
this. This would be a valuable outcome as well.

At any rate, this is not a call to end support for all architectures
that do not support Rust. Rather, this is a call to figure out if we
should work harder on getting Rust support for m68k et al.

Without doing this exploration, we cannot answer the questions.

Best regards,
Andreas Hindborg