> Despite more novice developers being attracted by Rust to the kernel community, we have found their commits are mainly for constructing Rust-relevant toolchains as well as Rust crates alone;
Is this surprising? The tooling is what needs fixing right now. Rust has been in the kernel for what a year? What are you expecting?
Oh sure, but for anyone hoping that a glut of new Linux contributors are just around the bend once the Rust tooling is in place might be suffering from unwarranted optimism. Judging by mailing list discussions, it's looking like Rust in the Linux kernel is just as complicated as C in the Linux kernel, and it won't really be a revolution so much as an incremental step. I believe that many kernel developers will probably adopt Rust because it offers them better facilities, but I don't think most Rust developers will suddenly take up kernel programming.
Is this surprising? The tooling is what needs fixing right now. Rust has been in the kernel for what a year? What are you expecting?