C-rusted is taking shape and the result is already substantial

A nearly complete technical specification. A working analyzer. A scalable approach to safer C, without replacing the C ecosystem.

C-rusted is moving decisively from language design to working technology.

Its core technical specification is nearing completion, and a substantial Clang-based analyzer already turns the design into verifiable results. C-rusted brings ownership and borrowing, initialization, pointer bounds, resource lifecycles, function contracts, relational value reasoning and application-specific properties to standard ISO C.

The annotations disappear during ordinary compilation. Existing compilers, ABIs, build systems and deployment models remain available, with no additional runtime overhead. C-rusted strengthens C without requiring organizations to rewrite their software in another language or abandon decades of tooling and expertise.

The implementation is already substantial: approximately 50,000 lines of analyzer code, supported by hundreds of validated test cases linked to the language specification. Recent internal measurements show the current single-threaded prototype processing approximately 3,500 lines of C per second on a commodity laptop. Throughput will evolve as deeper analyses are introduced, but this already establishes a practical baseline.

The analysis model was designed with scalability in mind. Each function is verified independently against an explicit contract. Although the current prototype is single-threaded, this function-scoped architecture creates a natural path to parallel execution across functions and translation units, on multicore machines or distributed build infrastructure.

C-rusted can be introduced incrementally. A team can begin by annotating critical APIs, add the analyzer to CI, and progressively extend verification without changing its production compiler or generated binaries. Projects can define checks for their own APIs and protocols: correct use of locks, file handles, cryptographic contexts, device resources, and other application-specific abstractions.

For AI-assisted development, the annotations give coding systems precise constraints, while the analyzer provides an objective acceptance test for generated changes. The result is a controlled generate–analyze–repair process rather than reliance on plausible-looking code.

C-rusted is no longer only a promising language proposal. It is becoming an industrial technology. You keep the C, but add much stronger guarantees. — Abramo Bagnara, BUGSENG CTO

Would you like to take a closer look?

We are opening conversations with selected industrial users and technology partners interested in evaluating C-rusted on demanding codebases, integrating it into existing platforms, and helping shape its path to productization.

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