Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language

[Siarhei Siamashka]

On Monday, 9 January 2023 at 07:15:43 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/8/2023 8:31 PM, Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
>> Yes, they are not baked into the ISO language standard.
>
> They can't be because the C semantics make it impossible.

It's impractical to have this in the ISO standard, but surely not 
impossible. Various C compilers from different vendors implement 
bounds checking. See:

   * https://bellard.org/tcc/tcc-doc.html#Bounds
   * 
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Instrumentation-Options.html
   * https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AddressSanitizer.html
   * 
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/how-to-use-native-run-time-checks?view=vs-2022

So your statement that "C has no mechanism to prevent them" just 
ignores reality and the existing C compilers. If you are 
comparing the lowest common denominator ISO C spec with the 
vendor specific DigitalMars D implementation, then this is not a 
honest apples-to-apples comparison.

The Linux kernel is using GNU C compiler and recently switched 
from `-std=gnu89` to `-std=gnu11`.

Bounds checking in the Linux kernel is done by 
https://docs.kernel.org/dev-tools/kfence.html or 
https://docs.kernel.org/dev-tools/kasan.html

>> But D has no ISO language standard at all.
>
> Neither does Rust.

Too bad for Rust. Though they do have language editions and 
there's the Ferrocene project too.