The move to mandate Rust in Debian may be premature, and many of us
with older hardwared platforms, or simulators thereof, are concerned.
It has been possible to build the gcc Rust compiler on some CPU
platforms since gcc-14-20241221 up to gcc-16-20251012, but the
compiler is not ready from general use:
% cat hello.rs
fn main() {
println!("Hello, world ... this is the Rust language");
}
% gccrs-16-20251012 -frust-incomplete-and-experimental-compiler-do-not-use -c hello.rs
hello.rs:2:5: error: could not resolve macro invocation 'println' [E0433]
2 | println!("Hello, world ... this is the Rust language");
| ^~~~~~~
I have seen some mention of a project to produce a Rust compiler in
the LLVM project, but as of the latest release, 21.1.4, available in
prebuilt binary form from
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/
there is only support for C, C++, and Fortran.
The Rust compiler that people appear to be using in the Linux world
is, I suspect, unlikely to be adapted to support various older CPU architectures in its backend. At present, I know that it handles
x86_64 and ARM64, but I nothing nothing about other CPU types for it.
I find it extremely unhealthy to have only a single compiler for a
programming language that is expected to be in wide use, and would
always counsel programmer users about the dangers of monoculture.
If there is progress with gccrs, that MIGHT mean that Rust could be
quickly supported for the large number of CPU types that gcc can be
built for.
The LLVM project targets many fewer CPU types, but that could change.
Finally, I draw your attention to a new article in Communications of
the ACM that arrived in my postal box yesterday, at the same time as
its electronic publication was announced:
Jaemin Hong and Sukyoung Ryu
Automatically Translating C to Rust
Commun. ACM 68(11) 58--65 November 2025
https://doi.org/10.1145/3737696
I watched a net video on this TRACTOR project a few weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YDW8uI2j0M
time: 50m 33s
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail:
beebe@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233
beebe@acm.org beebe@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL:
https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)