Rust gets a place in systemd, and the creator of Tokio wants to bring the language to everyday web apps
New components of the Linux init system may now be written in Rust, while the Topcoat framework puts Rust to work for server-side web applications.
The Linux init system systemd now accepts programs written in Rust. Developer Christian Brauner has had the necessary groundwork merged into the main branch, with version 263 in mind, The Register reports. The first component to use it will be a utility for enrolling certificates into kernel keyrings. Phoronix had already reported the merge.
The ground rules are strict. Rust may only be used for new, standalone components that the rest of systemd does not depend on, and existing C code will not be rewritten. There is no Cargo, Rust's usual build tool: everything is built with Meson. According to Linuxiac, the Rust programs also avoid the standard library and external packages, and talk to the existing C libraries through generated bindings. Support is optional and requires Rust 1.85 or later. Brauner said the team would have liked to use Rust in the core as well, but that support for dynamic libraries still falls short.
Beyond system software, Rust is also seeking new ground. Carl Lerche, known as the creator of the popular asynchronous runtime Tokio and an engineer at AWS, presented Topcoat at a conference, a framework for web applications in Rust, The Register writes. Unlike Leptos or Dioxus, Topcoat compiles not to WebAssembly but to JavaScript, and renders pages largely on the server. Lerche is aiming at ordinary database-driven web apps, not heavyweight applications such as Figma.