Rust version policy

Supported versions

The kernel documents the minimal requirements to compile it. Since v6.11, the kernel supports a minimum version of Rust, starting with Rust 1.78.0.

For the moment, we cannot guarantee newer Rust versions will always work due to the unstable features in use1. Removing the need for them is a priority of the project.

To ameliorate that, the kernel is now being build-tested in Rust's pre-merge CI. That is, every change that is attempting to land into the Rust compiler is tested against the kernel, and it is merged only if it passes. Similarly, the bindgen tool is also build-testing the kernel in their pre-merge CI.

Thus, with the pre-merge CIs in place, those projects hope to avoid unintentional changes to Rust and bindgen that break the kernel. This means that, in general, apart from intentional changes on their side (that we will need to workaround conditionally on our side), the upcoming Rust and bindgen versions should generally work. This applies to beta and nightly versions of Rust as well.

In addition, getting Linux to build on stable Rust has been a "flagship goal" of the Rust project for 2024H2 and 2025H1. We also have two ongoing goals for 2025H2: language and compiler.

1

To clarify, the Rust language is stable, i.e. it promises backwards compatibility, except for those unstable features.

Supported toolchains

The Rust versions currently supported should already be enough for kernel developers in distributions that provide recent Rust compilers routinely, such as:

  • Arch Linux.
  • Debian 13 (Trixie), Debian Testing and Debian Unstable (Sid).
  • Fedora Linux.
  • Gentoo Linux.
  • Nix (unstable).
  • openSUSE Slowroll and Tumbleweed.
  • Ubuntu LTS (20.04, 22.04, 24.04) and non-LTS (interim).

In addition, we support the toolchains distributed by Rust, installed via rustup or the standalone installers.

Finally, slim and fast LLVM+Rust toolchains are provided at kernel.org.

Please see the Quick Start guide for details.

Minimum upgrade policy

We have not upgraded the initial minimum yet (Rust 1.78.0, released 2024-05-02).

Our current plan is to propose Debian Stable's Rust versions as the minimum supported versions to use.

For instance, Debian 13 (Trixie)'s Rust version is 1.85.0 (released 2025-02-20), thus we are aiming to have that one as the new minimum.