Open Source Summit Europe 2024

Despite all controversies, Rust in recent times has gained popularity as the second Linux kernel high-level language. There’s been discussions about its applicability in various kernel subsystems which yielded tentative conclusions. People have been advised by kernel gurus to use Rust for subsystem implementations rather than for drivers, and the author totally shares that stance. With that said, the author had a zswap backend called zblock ready for but still not accepted into the mainline, so the idea came naturally: to rewrite it in Rust and compare performance and complexity of the two implementations. Whichever wins gets submitted. This talk will cover the main principles of zblock (which stay the same no matter the language used), the obstacles the author met while implementing it in Rust, and finally the comparison of the two. It will be fun.