On Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 03:45:50PM +0200, Miguel Ojeda wrote: > Hi Willy, > > On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 2:26 PM Matthew Wilcox <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > None of this (afaict) has been discussed on linux-fsdevel. And I may > > have missed somethiing, but I don't see the fs module in this series > > of patches. Could linux-fsdevel be cc'd on the development of Rust > > support for filesystems in the future? > > In order to provide example drivers and kernel modules, we need to > have some safe abstractions for them, thus we are adding some as we > need them. > > More importantly, the abstractions also serve as a showcase of how > they may be written in the future if Rust support is merged. > > This does not mean these abstractions are a final design or that we > plan to develop them independently of subsystem maintainers. In fact, > we would prefer the opposite: in the future, when the support is > merged and more people start having more experience with Rust, we hope > that the respective kernel maintainers start developing and > maintaining the abstractions themselves. > > But we have to start somewhere, and at least provide enough examples > to serve as guidance and to show that it is actually possible to write > abstractions that restrict the amount of unsafe code. > > And, of course, if you are already interested in developing them, that > would be actually great and we would love your input and/or that you > join us. No objections to any of this. I love the idea of being able to write filesystems in Rust. I just think it would go more smoothly if linux-fsdevel were involved more closely so people at least have the option of being able to follow design decisions, and hopefully influence them. That goes both ways, of course; I hardly think our current operations structures are the optimum way to implement a filesystem, and having fresh eyes say things like "But that shouldn't be part of the address_space_operations" can impel better abstractions. > As for the `fs` module, I see in lore 2 patches didn't make it > through, but I didn't get a bounce (I do get bounces for the > rust-for-linux ML, but I was told that was fine as long as LKML got > them). Sorry about that... I will ask what to do. The obvious answer is to split out the 'fs module' into its own patch ;-) I presume it was part of the kernel crate which would have been either patch 17 or 11 in that series? > Meanwhile, you can see the patches in this branch: > > https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux.git rust-next > > Cheers, > Miguel
