A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++

serviscope_minor shares a Phoronix post: A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code. The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing work around supporting Rust within the Linux kernel. While it's not clear yet if there's sufficient weight to make it a reality, a Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been restarted over potentially seeing the Linux kernel C code converted to C++ in the future.

Back on 1 April 2018 was a set of 45 patches by Red Hat engineer David Howells to begin converting the kernel to C++. This would allow the mainline kernel to make use of inline template functions, inline overloaded functions, class inheritance, and other features not currently supported by the Linux kernel with its C code. A bit hard to make serious discussions that day and ultimately the patches resided on the Linux kernel mailing list for six years without much discussion. serviscope_minor adds: It is notable that the current discussion is somewhat different from the infamous discussions in the past.

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