Design meeting: Rust for Linux

[tgross35]

Summary

We would like an opportunity to discuss what has been going well and what has been difficult with RfL. There are two recently relevant topics that would be good to discuss:

• Bitfields have been somewhat of a pain point. Are there thoughts on official support? Add bitfields support rfcs#3113?
• FIeld projection, which improves pin ergonomics (likely also some of the bitfield pain points). RFC: Field projection rfcs#3318

It would be nice to just get the general feel of what the team thinks here, we do not need to plan for in-depth discussion.

I think that a large portion of the meeting will likely just be introductions and figuring out what kind of communication we would like to have going forward.

If time allows, we can go through the wanted features lists and spend 1-2 minutes per topic getting a pulse check (whether the Rust team would like / is open to / is against each item) so we know how best to proceed with workarounds vs. in-tree work.

Background reading

• A list of new features for RfL Rust wanted features Rust-for-Linux/linux#354
• A list of unstable features we use or would like to use Rust unstable features needed for the kernel Rust-for-Linux/linux#2
• Some of the complications of safely accessing bitfields in extern structs bitfields raw pointer accessors rust-bindgen#2674

About this issue

This issue corresponds to a lang-team design meeting proposal. It corresponds to a possible topic of discussion that may be scheduled for deeper discussion during one of our design meetings.

@ojeda feel free to edit as you see fit