January 12, Open Source Security, known for developing grsecurity, announced the sponsorship of the development of a front-end to the GCC compiler to support the Rust programming language - gccrs.
Initially, gccrs was developed in parallel with the original Rustc compiler, but due to the lack of language specifications and frequent early compatibility-breaking changes, development was temporarily abandoned and resumed only after the release of Rust 1.0.
Open Source Security is motivated by the possible appearance of Rust code in the Linux kernel and by the fact that the kernel is most often built with the gcc compiler. In addition to this, programs in several languages ββat once can have vulnerabilities caused precisely by this fact (see below). Exploiting Mixed Binaries) that would not exist in pure C or C++ programs.
Currently, Open Source Security is sponsoring one developer who will work on gccrs over the next year, with the possibility of funding for more staff. Also involved in the process is the British company Embercosm, which specializes in the development of GCC and LLVM and provided formal employment for developers for this initiative.
Source: linux.org.ru