Git Developers Discuss The Possibility Of Beginning To Use Rust Code

The latest open-source project eyeing the possibility of beginning to allow the Rust programming language to be used within its codebase is the Git project.

The widely-used Git distributed version control system is evaluating the idea of allowing Rust code within its codebase to complement the existing C and Python use throughout this dominant open-source project.

Using Rust within Git is being considered to lower the risk of memory safety bugs, making it easier when refactoring or adding new code to Rust, and opening up Git development to Rust developers that may not be experienced or comfortable in C.

While the memory safety characteristics of Rust are a positive for many, so far the reactions by Git developers have been mixed. In part because Git is widely used on many different platforms and many different CPU architectures. Currently using Rust pretty much mandates the use of the LLVM-based rustc compiler. There is the ongoing work to add usable Rust support with the GCC compiler, etc, but as it stands right now those alternatives are not production-ready. So Git's usage could be limited if Rust code becomes mandated or otherwise they may have to initially make the Rust-based functionality for Git optional.

Those curious about the ongoing discussions around Rust code for Git can be found via this mailing list thread. It will be interesting to see where this discussion leads but given the platform/compiler limitations it's unlikely there is to be any sudden movement / support requirement differences for Git.