The first half of the 6.6 merge window [LWN.net]

The first half of the 6.6 merge window

Posted Sep 7, 2023 16:18 UTC (Thu) by angelsl (subscriber, #144646)
In reply to: The first half of the 6.6 merge window by milesrout
Parent article: The first half of the 6.6 merge window

Why does it being ideal that the latest Rust version is used imply that Rust is unstable?

It's not. It's perfectly fine to stay on some fixed version. But Rust is still getting new features that make it more ergonomic especially for low-level development like the kernel and people want to use those features.

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The first half of the 6.6 merge window

Posted Sep 7, 2023 22:22 UTC (Thu) by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074) [Link] (1 responses)

Doesn't that increase the difficulty of using newer kernel on older distribution? I feel there is a difference between difficulty of backporting a new kernel and backporting a new kernel and all the required rust machinery, since the version my distro has can no longer build the current kernel.

In the same vein, I am sure gcc has nice features people would like to use in at least some versions between 5.1 (minimal requirement) and 13.2 (current version).

I am unsure why there is (or will be) difference in policy between those two compilers.

The first half of the 6.6 merge window

Posted Sep 11, 2023 18:08 UTC (Mon) by ojeda (subscriber, #143370) [Link]

> Doesn't that increase the difficulty of using newer kernel on older distribution? I feel there is a difference between difficulty of backporting a new kernel and backporting a new kernel and all the required rust machinery, since the version my distro has can no longer build the current kernel.

Distributions can ignore Rust for the time being if they wish to do so. Some distributions, when I checked with them, told me they would be happy to provide a package (or support in some other way) to compile the kernel with the latest Rust release, assuming they need it.

Ubuntu, for instance, offers experimental support for it, by providing a package with the required Rust toolchain.

> In the same vein, I am sure gcc has nice features people would like to use in at least some versions between 5.1 (minimal requirement) and 13.2 (current version).
>
> I am unsure why there is (or will be) difference in policy between those two compilers.

There is definitely a difference nowadays; however, the plan is to remove that difference as soon as it is possible/reasonable. Please see this section in the webpage: https://rust-for-linux.com/rust-version-policy#after-a-minimum-version-is-declared.