Compile with Fil-C

[mSparks43]

Describe the idea

During a recent discussion over apt switching to rust, fil-c came up

https://github.com/pizlonator/fil-c

Looking into it, it might offer significant benefits without requiring much changes to the code base?

It should be done because

Fil-C catches all of the stuff that makes memory safety in C hard, like:

• Out-of-bounds on the heap or stack.
• Use-after free (also heap or stack).
• Type confusion between pointers and non-pointers.
• Type errors arising from linking.
• Type errors arising from misuse of va_lists.
• Pointer races.
• System calls. All buffers passed to system calls are checked for bounds and type.
• Lots of other stuff.

Fil-C comes with a reasonably complete POSIX libc and even supports tricky features like threads, signal handling, mmap/munmap, longjmp/setjmp, and C++ exceptions.

What are the alternatives?

Switch to rust, stay as is.

Additional context

Not affiliated, dont even have experience with it, but on paper it looked like a useful discussion

Extra fields

• I have checked the existing New Ideas, RFCs Of The Core Team, Ideas Soon To Be Addressed and Someday Ideas
• I have read the Contributing Guidelines
• I'd like to work on this idea

[callmetango]

Thank you for sharing this idea! This xlibre-filc ($4871725) · Snippets · GitLab might be interesting in this context.

[mSparks43]

some other relevant discussion (links your snippet)

https://lobste.rs/s/p0pozh/fil_c