The Rust-For-Linux crew is preparing to raise the minimum supported Rust version for building the Linux kernel and and similarly also bumping the minimum supported version of bindgen, the tool for generating Rust FFI bindings for C code in the kernel.
Rust 1.85 released last year and stabilized the Rust 2024 edition. Rust 1.85 went on to find use as the default version in the likes of Debian 13 “Trixie”.
Linux kernel developers last year then shared their plans for aligning their minimum required Rust version with the version found in Debian stable releases. Noting that Debian 13 would mean upgrading to Rust 1.85 as the baseline.
With Debian 13 being out for months, patches are now posted to the kernel mailing list for raising the minimum supported versions to align with the Debian 13 baseline. This bump takes the minimum version from Rust 1.78 to Rust 1.85 and then from Bindgen 0.65.1 to 0.71.1. In turn there are some clean-ups made to the Rust kernel code now that Rust 1.85+ can be assumed.
These patches are now out for review making that minimum Rust version change for the Linux kernel. Given the current timing and the Linux 7.1 merge window being just weeks away, we’ll see if this minimum version bump manages to make it for Linux 7.1 or is held off for the next window.
