Podcast Summary
Rust's single owner restriction: Rust's single owner restriction enhances memory safety and is enforced with added complexity in a general-purpose imperative language, allowing for a smoother transition from C and C++ with optional arithmetic overflow checking and a language-specific build and package management system named Cargo.
Rust is a modern, high-level programming language that combines the efficiency of C++ with improved type safety and memory management features. It enforces a single owner restriction, similar to C++11, but with the added complexity of enforcing such restrictions in a general-purpose imperative language. Rust's runtime performs array bounds and arithmetic overflow checking, with the latter being optional. Rust uses a language-specific build and package management system named Cargo, and the team plans to use the Rust toolchain as a back end. They are using a restricted version of Rust, called RAR, which is semantically equivalent to C and can be translated to C via a source-to-source translator. This allows for a smoother transition from C and C++. Despite the restrictions, RAR code is proper Rust and compiles to binary using the standard Rust compiler. The team is using the same semantic restrictions as described in Russinoff's book and supports a commonly used macro that provides a C-like for loop in Rust.
Rust to C conversion with plexi: The team created a transpiler named plexi that converts Rust code to C code, allowing for wider platform compatibility through various compilation methods.
The team has developed a transpiler named "plexi," inspired by Marshall's iconic plex amplifiers. This tool, based on the plex parser and lexer generator, converts Rust code to C code through lexical and syntactic transformations. Recent enhancements include improved handling of array declarations and support for Rust const declarations. The resulting C code can be compiled using a C++ compiler, fed to Anhul's FPGA compiler, or translated to C Lite-C via the Rust-to-C Lite-C translator. The team's research is available under a CC4.0 license on archive.org. In essence, plexi offers a versatile solution for compiling and converting Rust code, expanding its reach to various platforms.