Re: Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] Inline helpers into Rust without full LTO

From: Andrew Lunn

Date: Mon Mar 23 2026 - 08:58:24 EST


On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 04:24:59AM +0100, Miguel Ojeda wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 4:04 AM Andrew Lunn <andrew@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Rust is already fragmented, because it does not support all
> > architectures. Do we really want to make it even more fragmented by
> > having some bindings only work on a subset of the subset of
> > architectures?
>
> That is not the case. The `depends on` is not about putting them on
> abstractions, but on this experimental build feature, which is gated
> on `EXPERT` to begin with, because it uses a fairly exotic approach
> involving LLVM bitcode, which carries potential pitfalls, like the
> mismatches on the target string like one of the commit messages
> mentions, and possibly others.

I'm not sure i follow this.

Maybe i should ask a different question.

You said:

> we
> may want to start simple with x86_64 and arm64 or similar first.

The current proposed code for netlink needs this feature, because it
needs access to inline C functions. Is the implication, following a
chain of dependencies, that netlink would only build on x86_64 and
arm64?

If you want netlink on um, arm32, riscv, loongarch you would need a
different implementation of the binding?

And a completely different question. Are there other work in progress
solutions to allow the use of inline C functions? For networking, in
particularly MAC and protocol code, anything which needs to access a
struct sk_buf, a solution to this problem will be required. Do you see
this "fairly exotic approach" as just a sort term bridge until some
other "boring approach" is ready?

Andrew