As has been the trend with recent Linux kernel releases, a lot of Rust programming language abstractions and other additions are coming for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel.
Miguel Ojeda sent out the main set of Rust changes today for Linux 6.17 and beyond that other Rust changes have been trickling in via the driver core area and various other subsystems seeing increasing work around allowing kernel drivers to be written in the Rust programming language as an alternative to C.
Rust changes for Linux 6.17 include enabling a new set of Clippy lints, extending a number of the Rust crates used for the Linux kernel, and also adding some additional code reviewers to the MAINTAINERS file for the Linux kernel. The kernel crate meanwhile adds a new ‘bug’ module: add ‘warn_on!’ macro, delayed work items for the workqueue module, support for ‘bit’ and ‘genmask’ functions in the bits module, and improvements to a variety of other Rust kernel crate modules. The pin-init crate has also seen a number of additions too.
More details on the submitted Rust changes for Linux 6.17 via this pull request.
Separately was the driver core pull request this week that as of late also contains a number of Rust changes. Rust work here includes adding the “CoreInternal” device context and a number of other additions and new Rust language abstractions. There is also support for ACPI device IDs and driver match tables now from Rust code, new DMA capabilities from Rust, various new I/O abstractions, and other wrappers.
As mentioned, various other Rust changes being merged into Linux 6.17 via the other subsystem pull requests, like with the ongoing NOVA open-source NVIDIA Rust driver over in the DRM area. We are now half-way through the two-week Linux 6.17 merge window.
