C2Rust is an open-source project that aims to make it possible to migrate C99-compliant code to Rust. Working on this relatively new tool has also allowed its creators to learn a few lessons about the way C code is written and to explore the current limits to Rust possibilities of replacing it at the ABI level.

The rationale behind c2rust is enabling the incremental migration of system software to make it more secure by removing memory corruption as much as possible. Rust is an excellent candidate for this since it combines memory safety with uncompromised speed and interoperability. In particular, since its memory handling does not rely on garbage collection or reference counting, Rust is a great fit for interoperability with C and C++ over FFI, which is often an issue with GC-ed and reference counting languages. But manually translating code is a slow and expensive process, so rust2c tries to help with the first step.

Our goal is to build useful tools that make it easier to take existing C code and get up and running with Rust. We aim to automate much of the translation and rewriting process so that migrating legacy systems is practical and scalable with minimal manual effort.

#c #system programming #rust #development #programming-c