> The converted unsafe rust segfaulted at the same place the C code did. It's compatible, but not safe

That is indeed the point of c2rust. It gives you a baseline that is semantically identical to the original codebase, and with that passing the full test suite, bug-for-bug, you can then start gradually adopting rusty idioms to improve the memory safety of the codebase.

What comes out of c2rust is not intended for human consumption. It's more verbose than the original and harder to work on, but no safer. You lose the C idioms that people understand, while not gaining Rust idioms. It's like working on compiler-generated assembly code by hand.

2022 discussion on HN.[1]

There's a DARPA funded effort called TRACTOR, Translate All C To Rust, which has funded some efforts to develop a usable translator.[2] It's about 10 months after award, with no reported progress. I've been checking the personal sites of the academics involved, and they barely mention the project, although $5 million has been allocated to it.[3] The approach comes from U.C. Berkeley - let the LLM generate slop, check it using formal methods.[4] Not expecting near-term results.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169263

[2] https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/translating-legacy-c...

[3] https://chandrasekaran-group.github.io/

[4] https://metalift.pages.dev/