Second months Contributing to the Rust compiler (rustc)

This is the final semester of my B.Tech in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and it is mainly for industrial experience in my college. After looking at various options and reaching out to various people and organizations, I have decided to do mine by contributing to the Rust programming language compiler and this is the begining of my second months doing so.

I have always wanted to go deeper into the inner workings of compilers and also contribute to the Rust compiler for a while. Also, my technical experience has always revolve around working on OpenSource project from Git, systemd, OSIPI etc. So, contributing to Rust compiler standout in the very few options which I had and it has really being fun and educating doing that.

To start with contributing Rust compiler, I reached out to Esteban Kuber (his mastodon handle where he is more active)who is a Rust compiler Engineer, Rust compiler maintainer for the past 10 years. He had also worked as Principal Software engineer at Amazon where he was working on Rust compiler and currently works at osdyne. So, currently Esteban Kuber is the one mentoring met to contribute to the Rust compiler and I have been able to land some patches → https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/commits/main/?author=Unique-Usman. I always sync with him weekly where we discuss about whatever issues I am working on and what to work on for the comming week.

First meeting.

For the last months, I have worked different part of the compiler(mainly on Diagnostic (rustc errors)) some of which are:

• The Rustc Lexer

• The Rustc Parser

• The Rustc format (println! format string)

• The CondChecker (for checking conditions in “if and while condition)

  

  Code work through session around CondChecker.

• I also had the chance of working on Rustc debuginfo - more of personal exploration.

• Currently working on an issue around Macro expansion in rust specifically the Declarative macros.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will be writing more blogs about my contributions and experience working on Rustc internals and explaining how things work internally in the compiler (whatever I am working on). Also, why I learnt Rust and also my experience working with the language.

While I am doing all these, I will also be looking for full times roles in Software Engineering and in the field of AI/ML.

Thanks to my Estebank Kuber for taking time out of his busy schedule to mentor me and provide with Guidance, I really appreciate.

See you around, Keep coding and keep getting Rusty!!!.