I've actually done this. Wrote an Infiniband kernel driver, in C++.
Overcoming the obvious difficulties, including "new" being a variable name in a library, there were no technical difficulties. (Had no one in history EVER written in C++ on linux before?)
The argument FOR C++ in the linux kernel is the same argument for using C++ anywhere else - object abstractions are useful. The project took far less time. The bugs were fewer. The code was of course more readable - because of the tremendous wealth of context that C++ provides thru strong typing.
C people argue its easier to use simple constructs, since they are instantly understandable. What is NOT understandable is WHY the code is putting an int into an array. Those types have no obvious meaning beyond the line of code they are in.
In an object-typed language, you CAN learn the scenery and rapidly become familiar with the object set. The argument above (write) is largely silly - right-click and GoToDefinition works in almost any IDE - yes there may be more than one possibility, the IDE will display them all. So navigation thru code is vastly simpler than grepping for names.
Anyway, in 18 months we had an Infiniband layer integrated into linux, not too hard. Had to invent fundamental kernel/user page primitives that were missing. Interesting to note: Windows had all the driver support we needed, didn't have to invent anything.
Overcoming the obvious difficulties, including "new" being a variable name in a library, there were no technical difficulties. (Had no one in history EVER written in C++ on linux before?)
The argument FOR C++ in the linux kernel is the same argument for using C++ anywhere else - object abstractions are useful. The project took far less time. The bugs were fewer. The code was of course more readable - because of the tremendous wealth of context that C++ provides thru strong typing.
C people argue its easier to use simple constructs, since they are instantly understandable. What is NOT understandable is WHY the code is putting an int into an array. Those types have no obvious meaning beyond the line of code they are in.
In an object-typed language, you CAN learn the scenery and rapidly become familiar with the object set. The argument above (write) is largely silly - right-click and GoToDefinition works in almost any IDE - yes there may be more than one possibility, the IDE will display them all. So navigation thru code is vastly simpler than grepping for names.
Anyway, in 18 months we had an Infiniband layer integrated into linux, not too hard. Had to invent fundamental kernel/user page primitives that were missing. Interesting to note: Windows had all the driver support we needed, didn't have to invent anything.