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Proposal for Rust extern fil-c FFI to call Fil-C compiled C with runtime memory safety
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A proposal outlines how Rust could gain an `extern "fil-c"` FFI that speaks Fil-C's ABI, allowing Rust to safely call C dependencies compiled with Fil-C's runtime memory safety checks rather than crossing into ordinary unsafe C.
Currently, Rust's C FFI crosses an unsafe boundary where memory safety cannot be enforced by either language. A Fil-C bridge would make C dependencies memory-safe at runtime, creating a performance incentive to rewrite hot paths in Rust where checks become static rather than paying the runtime tax on checked pointer operations and garbage collection.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Fil-C recompiles C and C++ with capabilities, runtime checks, and a concurrent garbage collector, making memory-safety violations panic instead of becoming exploits.
Fil-C is intentionally not ABI-compatible with ordinary C, so existing Rust `extern "C"` cannot speak Fil-C's ABI and a new bridge must be built.
filnix packages Fil-C as a Nix cross-compilation platform with ports for more than 100 nixpkgs packages, providing a reproducible toolchain where a Rust bridge could be built.
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