A maintainer change has occurred in the Linux kernel community. Christoph Hellwig has transferred the maintenance of the dma-mapping tree to Marek Szyprowski. This change was implemented by updating the MAINTAINERS file and has been acknowledged by relevant parties.
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Linus Torvalds and Christoph Hellwig, a DMA subsystem maintainer, clashed over the integration of Rust code into the Linux kernel. Hellwig objected to the use of his maintained code without his permission. Torvalds countered that maintainers are responsible for their code, but not for controlling its usage. He reiterated the modular approach to Rust in the kernel: developers can choose to use or ignore Rust code, but cannot prevent others from using it. The dispute highlights the ongoing debate around Rust adoption within the Linux kernel.
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Greg KH's email strongly advocates for incorporating Rust into the Linux kernel. His extensive experience resolving kernel bugs over 15+ years highlights Rust's ability to prevent common memory safety issues in C, such as memory overwrites, error path cleanups, and use-after-free errors. While C++ offers some improvements, Rust provides stronger memory safety guarantees. KH argues that using Rust for new drivers and kernel components will significantly reduce bugs, increase development efficiency, and free maintainers to focus on more complex logic issues and race conditions. Although maintaining mixed-language codebases is challenging, he believes the Linux community can overcome this hurdle, ensuring Linux's continued success for the next 20+ years.
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Veteran Linux kernel maintainer Theodore Ts'o details the challenges of kernel maintenance in an email. He notes that maintainers aren't all-powerful but rather the "thin blue line" striving for code quality. Contributors often vanish after their code is accepted, leaving maintainers to clean up the mess. Ts'o urges development teams to actively participate in the community, jointly maintaining code quality instead of focusing solely on short-term goals. He cites Rust for Linux as an example of positive community engagement, but also points out the need for more time to build trust and address code maintenance burdens.
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