Safety and Interoperability with Rust and C++

Mathieu and Jason are joined by Jon Bauman to discuss safety and interoperability between Rust and C++. They dig into what "safety" really means (there are several categories of safety), what can and can't be guaranteed, how C++ could become a memory-safe language, and the challenges of making Rust and C++ work well together. Jon is currently looking for sponsorship to continue this important work. You can contact Jon via Joncppcast@shumi.org.
Links

• Jon's talks - YouTube playlist (youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ7xWQPwGyGo6t1sCzu…)

• P3874R1: Should C++ be a memory-safe language? - Jon Bauman, Timur Doumler, Nevin Liber, Ryan McDougall, Pablo Halpern, Jeff Garland, Jonathan Müller (wg21.link/p3874r1)

• P3874 R1 Should C++ be a memory-safe language? - cplusplus/papers issue #2475 (github.com/cplusplus/papers/issues/2475)

• C++ Interoperability Initiative problem statement - Rust Foundation (github.com/rustfoundation/interop-initiative/b…)

• BorrowSanitizer - an LLVM sanitizer for finding aliasing violations across Rust, C and C++ (borrowsanitizer.com)

• C++/Rust Interop Problem Space Mapping - Rust Project Goals 2025H2 (goals.rust-lang.org/2025h2/interop-problem-map…)

• Miri example on the Rust Playground (play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=de…)

• There is no memory safety without thread safety - Ralf Jung (ralfj.de/blog/2025/07/24/memory-safety.html)

• RustBelt: Logical Foundations for the Future of Safe Systems Programming - MPI-SWS (plv.mpi-sws.org/rustbelt)

• Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language - Ralf Jung's PhD thesis (research.ralfj.de/thesis.html)