--- title: "Canonical is Funding a PhD to Automate C to Rust Translation for Ubuntu" url: https://daily.dev/posts/canonical-is-funding-a-phd-to-automate-c-to-rust-translation-for-ubuntu-oefwros6m source_url: https://feed.itsfoss.com/link/24361/17424976/canonical-c-to-rust-automation type: article source: "It's Foss" published: 2026-08-21T09:25:32.452Z updated: 2026-08-21T09:26:44.427Z tags: ["rust", "c", "ubuntu"] reading_time: 3 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Canonical is Funding a PhD to Automate C to Rust Translation for Ubuntu **[It's Foss](https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Canonical, together with UK Research and Innovation, is funding a three-year PhD project at the University of Bristol to build a system that automatically translates large C codebases into safe, idiomatic Rust. The pipeline breaks a codebase into dependency-aware chunks, uses language models trained on C-to-Rust conversions for translation, then validates results with fuzzing and formal equivalence checks, repairing mismatches via symbolic program repair. The test cases are AppArmor and snap-confine, two production security components on Ubuntu, chosen for their real-world complexity rather than ease. Canonical's Jon Seager stressed that nothing generated by the project will be merged into either tool soon; the goal is to evaluate whether automated translation can be trusted on security-critical code before any rewrite is considered. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Canonical's PhD project to automate C to Rust translation actually testing on? The project uses AppArmor and snap-confine, two production Ubuntu security components handling access control and sandboxing, as its industrial-grade test cases. These were chosen precisely because they are complex, live, and heavily relied upon, giving a realistic measure of whether automated C-to-Rust translation can preserve behavior in security-critical code, rather than because they are easy to convert. _Anyone weighing a Rust rewrite of critical C components can follow how this translation approach performs via daily.dev._ ### How does an automated C to Rust translation pipeline verify the converted code behaves correctly? It combines fuzzing with formal equivalence checks to catch behavioral mismatches between the original C and the generated Rust. When a mismatch is found, a symbolic program-repair step locates the faulty translation and patches it directly instead of regenerating the entire code chunk, reducing wasted retranslation work. _Teams exploring code migration verification techniques can track this kind of research through daily.dev._ ### Is Canonical planning to replace AppArmor or snap-confine with Rust code soon? No, nothing generated by this translation research is going into either tool in the near term. Canonical's Jon Seager clarified the goal is to evaluate whether the automated approach can be trusted on security-critical code, driven by Canonical's vested interest in the software, not to signal an imminent rewrite. _Developers tracking Ubuntu's security roadmap can follow updates on this research through daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#c](https://daily.dev/tags/c), [#ubuntu](https://daily.dev/tags/ubuntu) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/canonical-is-funding-a-phd-to-automate-c-to-rust-translation-for-ubuntu-oefwros6m)