In the upcoming Linux 7.0, the kernel community officially announced that the so-called "Rust experiment" has ended, and Rust will remain and continue to develop as part of the Linux kernel for a long time. Although the version number 7.0 is more derived from Linus Torvalds' personal preference for numbering, the changes to Rust in this merge window are symbolic: upstream developers have reached a consensus that Rust is no longer just testing the waters, but is regarded as a long-term part of the kernel ecosystem.
As early as December last year, a patch proposed the view that "Rust experiments are over and Rust will exist in the kernel for a long time." Now this position has been officially confirmed through the latest merged patch. Currently, Rust code is already used in production environments, some Linux distributions already provide Rust code with the kernel, and millions of Android devices are actually using Rust-based kernel components. This means that Rust's potential value in terms of security, maintainability, etc. is no longer theoretical, but has been verified through real deployment.
Miguel Ojeda, who is responsible for the Rust-for-Linux project, wrote in this patch note that this is a signal to companies and other institutions: Rust has become a first-class citizen in the Linux kernel world, and he hopes that this will prompt relevant parties to invest more resources and allow their kernel developers to spend time learning and using Rust. He expressed his gratitude to the many kernel maintainers and developers who have supported this project over the years, and mentioned that when Rust support was originally merged, he listed 173 contributors in the commit notes. If you want to recount it now, the list will only be larger, so I will not try to list them one by one, but just thank all participants again.
This Rust-related patch is part of the latest round of Rust pull requests, which not only includes updates to the documentation, but also adds a "__rust_helper" flag to improve Rust kernel builds when LTO (link-time optimization) is enabled in the kernel. At the same time, some kernel-side Rust crates have also been enhanced and improved, but overall, this round of changes is more focused on continuous polishing and improvement rather than the introduction of disruptive new features.
As the Linux 7.0 merge window progresses, the phased expression "Rust Experiments" has officially come to an end, replaced by Rust's long-term commitment as one of the kernel development languages. For the Linux kernel and the broader open source software ecosystem, this means that the toolchain, training, and engineering practices around Rust will continue to deepen and expand in the coming years.