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Rust-GCC
gccrs
C++2013–2026
Rust-GCC / gccrs

gccrs

GCC Front-End for Rust

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Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
41Distinct people
46Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

GCC Front-End for Rust

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:38:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year46 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-10-26 03:09:03 UTC to 2026-10-14 23:33:51 UTC.

0510152013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 1 submissions, 13 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 0 submissions, 14 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14113
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14014
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

What Hacker News says

14 sources
roblabla·Sep 21, 2022
> Has the Rust-portability situation been addressed? The rust portability story is in the process of being addressed, by two different projects: gcc-rs[0] adds a Rust frontend to GCC. rustc-codegen-gcc[1] adds a GCC backend to rustc. Both are progressing pretty well, but it will likely still take a while until they reach maturity. > Or will this change restrict the number of platforms the Linux kernel will be usable on? There won't be any Rust inside the Linux core, only for drivers. So no, the linux kernel will always be usable on all platforms. However, the drivers written in Rust won't be usable on platforms not supported by LLVM until a GCC alternative becomes mature. > what will the advantages be? There are multiple: Safety, improved stability, and developer productivity. Compile time will likely take a hit (Rust is famously slow t
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o compile), but I don't expect a big shift in runtime performance (could be slightly better due to the extra opportunities the compiler has for optimization, but it's not super likely). As for having any effects on Rust: it already has! A lot of unstable features got prioritized due to being necessary for the kernel, such as fallible allocations. [0]: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs - monthly reports at https://thephilbert.io/category/gccrs-status-updates/ [1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_gcc - monthly reports at https://blog.antoyo.xyz/
In Next steps for Rust in the kernel
steveklabnik·Jul 11, 2022
> so, for implementing the GCC frontend, read the current LLVM frontend really carefully and do everything the same way? At a high level, this is correct: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Ques... > If gccrs interprets a program differently from rustc, this is considered a bug. I don't believe they are only reading the frontend, but using the reference first, then looking to the implementation second, and asking a lot of questions along the way.
In GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee
nindalf·Jun 23, 2022
The GCC story isn’t that far behind - there are two complementary efforts to get GCC support into the Rust ecosystem. One is a Rust frontend to GCC (https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs) while the other is a GCC backend to the existing Rust compiler (https://blog.antoyo.xyz/rustc_codegen_gcc-progress-report-12). It might take a while for these to bear fruit, but it’ll be awesome when they do. That should address the very valid concern that the full Linux kernel won’t compile for all supported architectures. And it’s not really a problem that the GCC effort will take time. The headline of this article implies that the Rust integration is nearly done but it’s only the beginning. Based on the issue tracker there’s years of work left to get everything working perfectly. That’s enough time to get GCC supported well.
In Linus Torvalds: Rust for the Kernel Could Possibly Be Merged for Linux 5.20
kibwen·Jun 17, 2022
Because there is often some confusion, note that there are two different projects in this space with different approaches. The project discussed in the video above is a new front end to GCC (written in C++, as is typical for GCC frontends) and is developed here: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs The other project involves plugging GCC's backend into the existing rustc frontend, and is developed here: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_gcc Both projects intend to eventually allow Rust code to make use of GCC. But they will likely appeal to different sets of users: the former project appeals to people invested in the GCC ecosystem who want to use Rust without installing a whole separate toolchain, and the latter to people invested in the Rust ecosystem who want to benefit from GCC's broader target support.
In Adding a Rust compiler front end to GCC [video]
ThatGeoGuy·May 19, 2022
Yeah I mean this is still kind of the case today, Rust just avoids it because there is really only one reference implementation. That may not even be true forever, Rust on GCC is continuing to get more and more feature complete over time. [1][2] Take the "defer" keyword in GNU C - it's valid in anything that has the GNU extensions but isn't standard C at all. And yet, some projects swear by it (it's not a bad feature, just nonstandard). There's a lot of weirdness in C implementations even looking across LLVM, GNU, or even when picking which libc you want! Try porting any nontrivial project to work with musl-libc. You might find that it's not as easy as swapping in a target and building statically! This is perhaps the whole rub with standardization - it's bought us as developers a lot, but it doesn't cover everything. The veil was kind of
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lifted for me when I started trying to use different Scheme implementations in a "standardized" way. I eventually gave up on that and just use whatever implementation I am most happy with (often CHICKEN, but that's a digression). This gets more complicated with C++, which modern standards mostly requires C11, but then also doesn't support everything that C11 requires either. They're different languages but yeah, compilers are gonna disagree on some of the edges there. [1] https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs [2] tangentially, Rust also avoids some UB discussion because the type system is a bit more complete in terms of its properties than C is, so they can resort to Option or Result when things get dicey in an API. Further, there's no official Rust ABI unlike C, so you don't have to worry about that either...
In Rust: A Critical Retrospective
roblabla·Apr 15, 2022
Wat? Rust has been a very stable language since Rust 1.0. They have a stellar record of keeping things working - with most code breaking being due to said code invoking UB. The edition system is a brilliant invention that allows evolving the language _without_ causing an ecosystem split. Thanks to this, Rust ends up having a much better stability story than even C++ (for whom you can't really mix and match different C++ versions). The bootstrapping situation is really not that bad? We have mrustc (A C++ rust->C transpiler) which allows compiling modern versions of rustc (latest supported rustc version being 1.54), which we can then iteratively bootstrap from up to the latest version. And things are getting better, with gccrs[0] in particular promising a rust frontend for GCC, written in C. As for the "curl something|bash", I suppose you'r
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e talking about rustup. You're free to download the script, and review it before installing it. And rust is also distributed many different ways. At least `curl something|bash` does not require root account, unlike `sudo apt install`, which can be very convenient. Like all things: Multiple options are generally better. [0] https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs
In Rustaceans at the border

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