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Congrats to the #Rustlang and #Rust-for-#Linux community: the #LinuxKernel now contains the first useful thing built using Rust[1]! 🥳 👏
It's a network driver for Asix PHYs. It's provided as an alternative to an existing driver written in C. The features are equivalent.
For more details see https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/d6beb085e8ff3d9547df8a5a55f15ccc7552c5d0, https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/cbe0e415089636170aa6eb540ca4af5dc9842a60, and https://lwn.net/Articles/949270/
[1] reminder, until now the #kernel's Rust support was not used for anything practical upstream: https://lwn.net/Articles/952029/
The Linux devs are hesitant to use Rust, because it doesn’t compile to all platforms Linux supports. So, it can only be used for drivers that are only useful on specific platforms that are supported by the compiler, which meant that until now it only was experimental ones like the graphics driver for Apple Silicon Macs.
wording is pretty funny here taken out of context.
What even is the context?
The Linux devs are hesitant to use Rust, because it doesn’t compile to all platforms Linux supports. So, it can only be used for drivers that are only useful on specific platforms that are supported by the compiler, which meant that until now it only was experimental ones like the graphics driver for Apple Silicon Macs.
So it’s the first useful thing built in rust for the Linux kernel?
And the out of context is “First useful thing built in rust (period)”?
Yes.
The poster finds it “kinda odd” that people don’t immediately correctly interpret statements like this toot as being exclusively about the upstream kernel: https://fosstodon.org/@kernellogger/111742009818641713
I find it “kinda odd” that he expects that to be a natural reading of the original toot.