[naasking]

Maintainers come and go, languages come and go. C will never go away and everyone working on kernels knows C, so there's a certain labour pool and skillset that will always be available that doesn't necessarily apply to Rust. That's even setting aside any technical issues, like bugs creeping up in the language interoperability layer, which obviously doesn't really happen if you're only using one compiler.

[ChocolateGod]

I think both arguments have credibility.

The R4L says they will make sure the Rust code is fixed when the C code is, and that's admirable, but the concern it means a developer now has to wait for that, holding up their work for release/submission. The bus factor is now on the R4L team.

Meanwhile, everyone involved in development for Linux already knows C.

[steveklabnik]

> the concern it means a developer now has to wait for that, holding up their work for release/submission.

They do not have to wait.

[ChocolateGod]

That's apparently still unclear according to the LKML.

[somanyphotons]

The linux kernel project specifically cares about the labor pool of maintainers.

My assumption is that it's easier to train someone on rust then to train someone to be a kernel subsystem maintainer