Google announced in its security blogto massively improve the interoperability of the C++ and Rust programming languages. In addition to the work that has already been implemented internally, the company wants to provide the Rust Foundation with one million US dollars so that it can carry out corresponding work across sectors as an independent industry body. In its own statement, the Rust Foundation is pleased with the financial support and announces a large-scale interoperability initiative.
The Rust Foundation writes to justify this the work that it is simply not practical for companies with millions of lines of C++ code, “to rewrite this code in Rust within a reasonable time frame. With the support of Google, the Rust Foundation has launched its new Interop Initiative to help organizations around the world that have invested in C++ the decision and process of investing in Rust to make it easier.”
In the announcement, Google refers to the numerous work the company has carried out so far in this area, which is intended in particular to improve the security of Android. Google mentions ABI changes, tools and build systems or wrapper libraries as possible areas of the future planned collaboration. As a first step, the Rust Foundation wants to concentrate on defining the scope of the planned project.
Google has been relying heavily on the use of Rust in its important software projects for several years. Above all, the company wants to largely combat the memory security errors typical in C and C++. In addition, Google supports Rust in Android, in the Chromium project and, last but not least, in the Linux kernel. For the Linux base in Android, the important Binder driver has already been ported to Rust. But Google also relies on Rust in numerous other areas and the employed developers quickly switch to the language.