● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportLow impact1 neutral
Proposal for a Rust FFI to Fil-C for enhanced memory safety in C/C++ dependencies
Key points
- Fil-C recompiles C/C++ with capabilities, runtime checks, and garbage collection.
- A Rust FFI for Fil-C would enable memory-safe integration of C/C++ libraries.
- The `filnix` project provides a platform for building Fil-C compatible packages.
- Zig is also exploring a Fil-C inspired ABI for memory safety.
The Challenge of C FFI in Rust
Rust's existing C Foreign Function Interface (FFI) allows access to C libraries but introduces an unsafe boundary. While Rust ensures memory safety at compile time, the C library is trusted to uphold contracts that neither language can enforce, potentially leading to exploits from memory-safety violations.
Introducing Fil-C
Fil-C offers an alternative by recompiling C and C++ code to include capabilities, runtime checks, and a concurrent garbage collector. This approach causes memory-safety violations to panic rather than become exploitable. It often requires minimal or no source code changes but introduces a runtime cost for safety.
Proposed Rust-Fil-C Bridge
The proposal advocates for a Rust FFI that speaks the Fil-C Application Binary Interface (ABI). Initially, this bridge could support scalar values, copied strings and slices, and opaque handles, generating safe Rust wrappers. This would involve compiling the entire C dependency graph with Fil-C, without an escape hatch to ordinary unsafe C. Shared memory integration could follow later, once the bridge can provide Fil-C with a revocable capability for Rust.
Current Developments and Related Efforts
The `filnix` project is already packaging Fil-C as a Nix cross-compilation platform, with ports for over 100 `nixpkgs` packages. This provides a reproducible toolchain and test bed for developing a Rust-Fil-C bridge. Separately, Zig is exploring a similar solution with an optional Fil ABI, inspired by Fil-C, aiming to compile Zig programs and their C/C++ dependencies with runtime memory safety.
Incentives for Adoption
Implementing a Rust-Fil-C FFI would align incentives by allowing Rust to be used for compile-time safety while incurring a performance penalty for using C. This would ensure legacy C libraries remain memory-safe, with every pointer operation checked and memory participating in garbage collection, providing a safer integration path.
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Reporting from
A proposal outlines the need for a Rust Foreign Function Interface (FFI) that is compatible with Fil-C, a system that recompiles C/C++ code with runtime memory safety checks and garbage collection. This would allow Rust projects to integrate C/C++ libraries while maintaining memory safety guarantees, addressing the current limitations of Rust's `extern "C"` which relies on unsafe C contracts.