Google on Monday donated $1 million to the Rust Foundation specifically to improve interoperability between the language and C++. C++, a popular general purpose programming language, has arguably fallen out of fashion due to concerns over safety.
Memory safety errors are the source of the majority of vulnerabilities for Google and Microsoft, and this has led to evangelism for memory-safe Rust and a scarlet letter for C/C++.
Thanks to endorsements by industry figures like Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, and from public sector figures like CISA director Jen Easterly, not to mention industry efforts like ISRG's Prossimo, there's pressure on software developers to consider Rust and other memory-safe languages where suitable.
Bergstrom told The Register that interoperability with C++ represents one of the biggest obstacles to broader adoption of Rust for Google and other organizations.
Google's Chromium project consists largely of C++ code, and Android uses the language too, alongside Java and others.
According to Bergstrom, Google's most significant increase in the use of Rust has occurred in Android, where interoperability started receiving attention in 2021, although Rust is also being deployed elsewhere.
Google has also been working to make developer tools like cxx, autocxx, bindgen, cbindgen, diplomat, and crubit handle communication between Rust and C++ code.
Bergstrom said that as of mid-2023, Google had more than 1,000 developers who had committed Rust code, adding that the ad giant recently released the training material it uses.
The Rust Foundation has also created a new Interop Initiative to make it more simpleto integrate Rust into existing C++ projects and workflows.
This Cyber News was published on go.theregister.com. Publication date: Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:13:05 +0000