Luckily, the gccrs developemt work is now backed by a company who is paying the main developer:
Having Rust support directly built into GCC means Rust code in kernel will not limit portability and no additional toolchain will be needed.
Having Rust support directly built into GCC means Rust code in kernel will not limit portability and no additional toolchain will be needed.
This is essentially a reimplementation of rustc. I'm not going to say "don't boil the ocean" but it will likely be a while before this is at feature parity with the main compiler. Even with a full-time developer.
There is a project to use gcc as a backend for rustc, which might be a more tractable option to removing the llvm dependency in the short term:
A gcc rustc backend is the way to go, clearly. That company would have been better off paying for that.
This is only the case if you assume their primary goal is to get a reimplementation as fast as possible. In my understanding that is not their primary goal. Their primary goal is to not require a Rust compiler in the build process. This means that the approach you suggest doesn't fit requirements.
Do you mean their goal is not to require `rustc` in the build process? Because I'm not sure how they're going to compile rust code without a rust compiler.
So then this is just a backend?
And a dishonest reimplementation at that. If you aren't enforcing the promises the language makes, you're delivering a lie.