Making it easier to move from C to Rust, without losing macros

What is it about?

Many systems today still run on legacy code written in C — a language that’s powerful, but risky when it comes to memory safety. Rust offers a safer alternative, but converting C code to Rust is not straightforward, especially when C macros are involved. Macros are like little programs that modify code before it’s compiled — and most existing tools simply erase them during translation, making the resulting code harder to understand and maintain. Our work introduces Oxidize, a new tool that preserves macro structure when translating C code to Rust. Instead of flattening everything, Oxidize intelligently decides which macros to keep and which ones to expand. We show that real-world macros can be translated directly into idiomatic Rust — improving safety without sacrificing readability or abstraction. This opens the door to safer and more secure software modernization, especially in embedded and safety-critical systems where macro-heavy C code is common.

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Photo by Wesley Ford on Unsplash

Photo by Wesley Ford on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work addresses a major gap in automated software migration: existing C-to-Rust tools ignore macros, a key feature in embedded and system-level code. By preserving macro structure and semantics, Oxidize allows developers to modernize large legacy codebases without losing readability or maintainability. This is especially timely as government and industry initiatives push for memory-safe programming — and demand tools that can bridge the gap between unsafe legacy code and safer modern languages like Rust. Our approach helps accelerate this transition in safety-critical domains such as robotics, automotive, and defense.

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