Kangrejos 2025 Interview: Tathagata Roy, Semantic code edits with CoccinelleForRust

At Kangrejos 2025 in Oviedo, Spain, the Rust Project Content Team talks with Tathagata Roy, Coccinelle for Rust. Tathagata describes that Linux needs to make complex semantic-aware changes across the entire repository, something that standard text replacement methods such as regular expressions are not suited for. Coccinelle is a tool built for this kind of work, and Tathagata describes its younger Rust-specific cousin that he built. Topics include: • Linux codebase structure, and the need to update drivers when the core API changes • What is semantic patching and how it works • Coccinelle for Rust: why it exists, how it's built, its place in the ecosystem • Leveraging Python scripts for complex AST-level transformations • What's next for the project Links mentioned: Coccinelle (for C, the original): https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelle Coccinelle for Rust: https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelleforrust Tathagata's Kangrejos 2025 workshop: https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelleforrust/-/blob/main/talks/kangrejos25.pdf Interview conducted by Tomáš Šedovič on behalf of the Rust Project Content Team.