Inching ever closer to the Rust standard library with gccrs

gccrs, an alternative compiler for Rust, has had the goal of compiling the extremely complex std crate for a few years now. Reaching that milestone will prove that the compiler can handle real Rust code, and allows us to tell you about all the “interesting” compiler tricks we’ve had to deal with.

gccrs is an alternative compiler for the Rust programming language, with the goal of having feature-parity with the official Rust compiler. To that aim, we must first support compiling the Rust standard library, an extremely complex piece of code often used as a testing ground for new language features. And while we are getting closer and closer to that milestone, the road ahead is still long.

In this talk, we will explore the most interesting hurdles we’ve had to deal with, as well as upcoming issues and how we plan to handle them. We will focus on compiler features, and will explore the inner workings of both gccrs and rustc to compare the two. The content will be technical, and will dive into specific bits of compiler code and how they will help dealing with your Rust programs.