Aliasing Limits on Translating C to Safe Rust

Explore the challenges and limitations of translating C code to safe Rust in this 18-minute conference talk from OOPSLA 2023. Dive into a study on the effectiveness of existing techniques for automatically converting unsafe raw pointers in C-translated Rust programs into safe Rust references. Discover how the researchers' novel evaluation methodology contradicts previous findings and reveals limitations in the Rust compiler's safety checker. Learn about proposed methods for improving translation, including a implemented technique that increases the number of pointers translatable to safe Rust references by 75%. Gain insights into the complexities of memory safety, ownership, and lifetime inference in the context of C to Rust translation.