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I want to switch to Rust, to get away from the C/C++/Nim mix we rely on at work. But embedded development (specifically for the ESP32-S3 chip, but we also have

by girvo 4y ago

I want to switch to Rust, to get away from the C/C++/Nim mix we rely on at work. But embedded development (specifically for the ESP32-S3 chip, but we also have to do a lot of STM32 work as well for our coprocessors) has sort of forced us down this path. That said, the bulk of our code is Nim, and it is lovely to work in. I just wish we didn't have to rely on C/C++ libraries and toolchains as much. CMake will be the death of me, I swear, and it would be nice to have all the thought we have to put into to lifetimes and safe bindings around unsafe C calls be able to be encoded into the language itself, rather than as comments and so on.

jamesmunns 4y ago
For what it's worth, the entire esp32 family is officially supported in Rust by espressif themselves [1], and the stm32 family is probably one of the most widely used cortex-m families in embedded Rust as well[2]. [1]: https://github.com/esp-rs https://github.com/esp-rs [2]: https://github.com/stm32-rs https://github.com/stm32-rs
- girvo 4y ago
  Right, though Espressif's official support for anything should be taken somewhat with a grain of salt ;) Having used their tools at work in anger for years at this point, there is a lot of gotchas, issues and bugs with their bindings at this point -- not all of which is Rust's fault, but the underlying problems with ESP-IDF itself. That said, its getting better over time, so I'm keeping a close eye on it (and we keep some experimental projects up to test it every couple of months). The upside of Nim is that "it's just C" at the end, with all the upsides and downsides that comes with. I'm very hopeful though! Edit to add: We started this project quite a while ago, too, which forced our hands. Writing unsafe Rust is a pain, so I didn't want to take the burden on for managing bindings myself at the start. If we were to start again, maybe we'd have made a different choice, but Nim at least eased the pain quite a bit.
  - n8henrie 4y ago
    Doesn't the ESP32C3 have native rust support -- no esp-idf or espressif official support concerns need apply? Are you stuck on the S3 exclusively?
    - girvo 4y ago
      We are stuck on the S3, yeah. The C3 is lovely, but doesn’t have everything we require, at least currently. Might change in the future but not right now.
f_devd 4y ago
Esp-rs has come a long way although it's still very much in a beta phase.
- girvo 4y ago
  Ah I was writing a reply to someone else as you commented this :) We've got experimental projects with some ports of our firmware to it already, but there are lots of showstoppers that we've run into (some of which are ESP-IDF's fault more-so than esp-rs directly). In the medium-to-long-term, I'm really hopeful we can move to it. Not quite there yet for our production use cases though unfortunately.
  - f_devd 4y ago
    If the lack of some services allows it (maybe not given the chip, but it was enough for me) I recommend using esp-hal+esp-wifi rather than esp-idf-hal, it is a pure rust 'rewrite' and it's been a great experience compared to esp-idf(c++). Default is bare-metal but embassy resolves most of the need of an rtos.
    - girvo 4y ago
      I'll check it out! While it's unlikely that we're going to rewrite this firmware anytime soon, being able to leverage Rust for future projects would be nice. The big thing for us is, we use basically every peripheral and driver that ESP-IDF has, along with some extra third-party ones for some other peripheral chips we run via our daughterboard setup -- and currently today, a lot of that isn't supported yet. Definitely keeping an eye on it though. The future of Rust on the ESP32 chips is promising!
    - witcher01 4y ago
      I don't know what the issue is but I've tried esp-wifi on the ESP32-C3 with the examples and nothing would run. It's a bummer since I'd have liked to leverage the Bluetooth support for my project.
      - 4y ago
phendrenad2 4y ago
Do you really need CMake? Are clean compilation times very slow?
- girvo 4y ago
  ESP-IDF is pretty dependant on it, sadly. I’m halfway through getting to the point where I can build it without!

by girvo 4y ago

jamesmunns 4y ago

For what it's worth, the entire esp32 family is officially supported in Rust by espressif themselves [1], and the stm32 family is probably one of the most widely used cortex-m families in embedded Rust as well[2]. [1]: https://github.com/esp-rs https://github.com/esp-rs [2]: https://github.com/stm32-rs https://github.com/stm32-rs

girvo 4y ago
Right, though Espressif's official support for anything should be taken somewhat with a grain of salt ;) Having used their tools at work in anger for years at this point, there is a lot of gotchas, issues and bugs with their bindings at this point -- not all of which is Rust's fault, but the underlying problems with ESP-IDF itself. That said, its getting better over time, so I'm keeping a close eye on it (and we keep some experimental projects up to test it every couple of months). The upside of Nim is that "it's just C" at the end, with all the upsides and downsides that comes with. I'm very hopeful though! Edit to add: We started this project quite a while ago, too, which forced our hands. Writing unsafe Rust is a pain, so I didn't want to take the burden on for managing bindings myself at the start. If we were to start again, maybe we'd have made a different choice, but Nim at least eased the pain quite a bit.
- n8henrie 4y ago
  Doesn't the ESP32C3 have native rust support -- no esp-idf or espressif official support concerns need apply? Are you stuck on the S3 exclusively?
  - girvo 4y ago
    We are stuck on the S3, yeah. The C3 is lovely, but doesn’t have everything we require, at least currently. Might change in the future but not right now.

f_devd 4y ago

Esp-rs has come a long way although it's still very much in a beta phase.

girvo 4y ago
Ah I was writing a reply to someone else as you commented this :) We've got experimental projects with some ports of our firmware to it already, but there are lots of showstoppers that we've run into (some of which are ESP-IDF's fault more-so than esp-rs directly). In the medium-to-long-term, I'm really hopeful we can move to it. Not quite there yet for our production use cases though unfortunately.
- f_devd 4y ago
  If the lack of some services allows it (maybe not given the chip, but it was enough for me) I recommend using esp-hal+esp-wifi rather than esp-idf-hal, it is a pure rust 'rewrite' and it's been a great experience compared to esp-idf(c++). Default is bare-metal but embassy resolves most of the need of an rtos.
  - girvo 4y ago
    I'll check it out! While it's unlikely that we're going to rewrite this firmware anytime soon, being able to leverage Rust for future projects would be nice. The big thing for us is, we use basically every peripheral and driver that ESP-IDF has, along with some extra third-party ones for some other peripheral chips we run via our daughterboard setup -- and currently today, a lot of that isn't supported yet. Definitely keeping an eye on it though. The future of Rust on the ESP32 chips is promising!
  - witcher01 4y ago
    I don't know what the issue is but I've tried esp-wifi on the ESP32-C3 with the examples and nothing would run. It's a bummer since I'd have liked to leverage the Bluetooth support for my project.
    - 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago

Do you really need CMake? Are clean compilation times very slow?

girvo 4y ago
ESP-IDF is pretty dependant on it, sadly. I’m halfway through getting to the point where I can build it without!