Why do Rust packages have any dependency on C code?

Date: 12/1/2023 · Tags: #rust, #clang, #good-reading

Alexis King 1 is one of my most advocated programmers in PL community. She is doing great! 🥰

Here is a fun and informative answer 2 wrote by Alexis for Why do common Rust packages depend on C code?. So I just post it as a recommendation.

Basically, the TL;DR points are:

  • C ABIs
  • C is your operating system’s interface
  • C ABIs are difficult to separate from the C language
  • C ABIs are difficult to separate from C toolchains

Footnotes

  1. Tweet from @lexi_lambda ↩

  2. StackOverflow - Why do common Rust packages depend on C code? ↩