Branches
Main branches
Currently we maintain the following main branches.
rust-next
rust-next is the branch that contains new Rust features to be submitted during the next merge window of the Linux kernel.
Changes to this branch land via patches sent to the mailing list.
It is part of linux-next.
rust-fixes
rust-fixes is the branch that contains Rust fixes for the current cycle of the Linux kernel.
Changes to this branch land via patches sent to the mailing list.
It is part of linux-next.
rust-dev
rust-dev is an experimental branch for integration purposes. It is a queue for patches that "look good enough".
Its intended use cases are:
- Finding merge/apply conflicts as early as possible.
- Providing a common base for development that requires features that are not yet in mainline or
rust-next, i.e. giving early access to features. This may include Rust-related changes from other subsystems, but it is not intended to cover our topic branches. - Providing extra testing to patches by making them easily available to more developers.
Note that this branch may be updated/rebased frequently and it might be gone in the future.
Topic branches
These branches are focused on a particular topic and are meant to enable collaboration on code that is targeted for upstreaming but has not reached mainline yet.
Some of these branches may contain work-in-progress code (similar to staging trees) that may not be suitable for upstreaming or general usage yet. Please check the details of each branch.
Changes to these branches land via GitHub PRs. Nevertheless, contributions should still follow the usual Linux kernel development process — see Contributing for details.
If you are interested in maintaining a new topic branch, then please contact us. Thank you!
staging/rust-pci
staging/rust-pci is dedicated to PCI-related abstractions, which are used by e.g. the NVMe driver.
The branch is kept in a compilable state (rebased regularly on top of rust-next or mainline). Fixes and features are welcome.
Danilo Krummrich is rust-pci's maintainer. You can also contact him through Zulip.
staging/rust-net
staging/rust-net is dedicated to networking-related abstractions.
The branch is kept in a compilable state (rebased regularly on top of rust-next or mainline). Fixes and features are welcome.
It is maintained by Trevor Gross and Valentin Obst. Please contact them through Zulip.
staging/rust-device
staging/rust-device is dedicated to device/driver-related abstractions.
The branch is kept in a compilable state (rebased regularly on top of rust-next or mainline). Fixes and features are welcome.
It is maintained by Danilo Krummrich and Philipp Stanner. Please contact them through Zulip.
staging/dev
staging/dev is a branch intended to integrate the other topic branches (similar to the role of rust-dev for the main branches).
It is maintained by Danilo Krummrich and Philipp Stanner. Please contact them through Zulip.
Past branches
These branches are unmaintained, archived, deprecated, frozen or do not exist anymore in the repository.
rust
rust was the original branch where development happened for two years before Rust support was merged into the kernel.
It contains most of the abstractions that the project worked on as a prototype/showcase. Some of those may eventually land upstream, others may be reworked with feedback from upstream, and a few may be dropped if unneeded.
The branch is now archived, thus no new changes are merged into it. While it may be deleted eventually, for the moment it is kept around since some of the code did not make it upstream and may be useful for others.
Similarly, its Rust code documentation (2023-03-13) is archived as well.
Changes to this branch landed via GitHub PRs. GitHub Actions was used as a pre-merge CI, compiling the kernel and booting it under QEMU for different toolchains, architectures and configurations. It also checked that some tests passed (e.g. loading sample modules, KUnit tests...) as well as building the PR under Clippy, building the docs, checking rustfmt, etc. KernelCI tests it. Finally, in the past, the Ksquirrel bot checked the PRs sent to it.