this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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That does NOT sound like a good idea.
Exactly, and I'm pretty sure one of the reasons is that it's remained on C, and NOT switched to C++, as has been often suggested.
The second they make it a mixed code base, that's the same second quality will deteriorate. Mixed code base is a recipe for disaster.
Edit:
Seems like Linus isn't onboard with this.
But I guess all the downvoters know better?
Greg Kroah-Hartman:
That's special pleading, that lacks basis in reality. Still he admits it's rough to mix codebases.
I'm not claiming Rust wouldn't be brilliant in some situations, but the detraction of a mixed codebase is worse than the benefit.
Moving from C to C++ would also not solve any real problem. C++ of course adds OOP which I think can be nice (not everyone agrees with this!) but it also adds an insane amount of language complexity and instability. Mentally reasoning about C code is hard, reasoning about C++ code is nearly impossible.
Rust however brings a novel solution to classes of problems like ownership and mutability with the borrow checker. It's now accepted to be a great tool for writing high performance code while preventing a substantial amount of common, but often subtle, bugs from slipping through. It's not arbitrarily the first non-C code to be accepted in the kernel. And it's used in other operating systems like Android and Windows already.
In general, for me, Rust > C > C++.
I've heard people say that C is like a loaded and cocked revolver, and if you're not careful, you could blow your foot off, whereas C++ is like a loaded and cocked sawed-off shotgun, and if you're not careful, you could blow your leg off.
C++ is a semi automatic shotgun with 200 barrels pointing in all directions.
Whilst it's gotten a lot better in the -17 and -20 iterations, the fact that there was recently a doorstop book published solely on the subject of C++ initialisation semantics is pretty telling.
I really like what Herb Sutter's doing around cppfront; I still wouldn't use C++ unless I absolutely had to.