> Automatically translating C to unsafe Rust is pointless, the resultant code is harder to read and there's no improvement in understanding how to get the code maintainable and safe, that requires tons of manual work by someone with a deep understanding of the codebase.

I have experience on a (nontrivial) translation of a "very unsafe" C codebase to Rust, and it's not true that there is no value in this type of work.

The first step, automatic translation from C to Rust via tools, immediately revealed bugs in the original codebase. This step alone is worth spending some time on the operation.

Ports from C to Rust aren't a binary distribution of "all safe" or no port at all. Some projects, for example ClamAV, are adopting a mixed approach - (part/most of) new code in Rust, and some translation of existing functionalities to Rust.

In general, I think that automatic porting of C to Rust is, in real world, an academic exercise. This is because C codebases designed without safety in mind, simply need to be redesigned, so the domain in not really "how to port C to Rust" - it's "how to redesign and unsafe C codebase to a safe one" first of all. Additionally, I believe that in such cases, maintaining the implementation details is impossible - unsafety is a design, after all.

I personally advocate for very precisely scoped ports, where it can be beneficial (safety an stability); where that's not possible, I agree, better abandon early.