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Community wise, yes. It seems to have gained some momentum.

From a technical point of view, I'm not so sure. C++ still interoperate easier with C than Rust, if only because you can normally just include the headers and be done with it. (Although as the article says, there are some cleanup to do.)




From an everything point of view, there's no point in adding complexity for no tangible benefit. Rust has tangible benefits (memory safety). Very far from a silver bullet, but demonstrably better than C.

Rust isn't being experimented with in the kernel because someone decided we should really add a second language. C++ interop with C doesn't matter when there's no reason to use C++ in the kernel anyway.


The "interoperate easier" idea is a trap for both C and C++ and worth avoiding because in fact they aren't quite compatible, so you're making both languages worse to achieve this. I don't much like C++, but if you must use C++, actually use C++ and forget that it's sorta kinda "compatible" with C.


I know they are not 100% compatible, but they are 99% compatible, and that's much better than Rust.

It's easy to make it compatible by not using fields called "class", or using #ifndef __cplusplus, most C library headers are actually like that. But not the Linux kernel because they refuse it.

That's why I'm saying that the choice is not a technical one.


You can create headers that are usable from C and C++, but you have to actively maintain it that way. As C headers tend to not have function definitions in them, it's fairly easy to avoid the C-only features.

I doubt that Linux headers give a damn about usability from C++ though.




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