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DARPA suggests turning old C code automatically into Rust – using AI, of course (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/programming@programming.dev

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To accelerate the transition to memory safe programming languages, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is driving the development of TRACTOR, a programmatic code conversion vehicle.

The term stands for TRanslating All C TO Rust. It's a DARPA project that aims to develop machine-learning tools that can automate the conversion of legacy C code into Rust.

The reason to do so is memory safety. Memory safety bugs, such buffer overflows, account for the majority of major vulnerabilities in large codebases. And DARPA's hope is that AI models can help with the programming language translation, in order to make software more secure.

"You can go to any of the LLM websites, start chatting with one of the AI chatbots, and all you need to say is 'here's some C code, please translate it to safe idiomatic Rust code,' cut, paste, and something comes out, and it's often very good, but not always," said Dan Wallach, DARPA program manager for TRACTOR, in a statement.

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[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

Ada is not strictly safer. It's not memory safe for example, unless you never free. The advantage it has is mature support for formal verification. But there's literally no way you're going to be able to automatically convert C to Ada + formal properties.

In any case Rust has about a gazillion in-progress attempts at adding various kinds of formal verification support. Kani, Prusti, Cruesot, Verus, etc. etc. It probably won't be long before it's better than Ada.

Also if your code is Ada then you only have access to the tiny Ada ecosystem, which is probably fine in some domains (e.g. embedded) but not in general.