Mixing Rust and C in Linux Likened To Cancer By Kernel Maintainer

A heated dispute has erupted in the Linux kernel community over the integration of Rust code, with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig likening multiple programming languages to 'cancer' for the project's maintainability. The conflict centers on a proposed patch enabling Rust-written device drivers to access the kernel's DMA API, which Hellwig strongly opposed. While the dispute isn't about Rust itself, Hellwig argues that maintaining cross-language codebases severely compromises Linux's integrated nature. From a report: 'Don't force me to deal with your shiny language of the day,' he [Hellwig] wrote. 'Maintaining multi-language projects is a pain I have no interest in dealing with. If you want to use something that's not C, be that assembly or Rust, you write to C interfaces and deal with the impedance mismatch yourself as far as I'm concerned.' This resistance follows the September departure of Microsoft engineer Wedson Almeida Filho from the Rust for Linux project, citing 'nontechnical nonsense.'

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