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The Rusty bits of Embedded

Regarding the Rust programming language and moreover its ecosystem and the overall maturity there is this trend of "measuring" the latter with series of question in the vein of: Are-we-Something-Yet? A few key examples would be:

And so on, and so forth ... There is even a subReddit (along with the GitHub page it represents) that obviously aims to gather them all in one place as a curated list of links.

 

The Official State

The last one in the list above is not linked anywhere. There might not be a dedicated "yet" page for it but what actually exists might be even better. 

On one hand there is this dedicated domain which serves as the front of the actual people at Rust who work on the parts of the language that should provide the means for embedded programming.

On the other hand there is the respective Embedded Book available in the good tradition of the language's documentation.

 

The Private Opinion

Out of the ocean of resources from Rust enthusiasts even those who dedicated themselves to the embedded niche are not too few and are all over the place.

For instance there are those who ponder the question itself and answer it in their articles:

  • Are we embedded yet? (1) - excellent categorization (with direct visual cues) of the respective features of the language, the support from the devices (processors and peripherals), and the communication protocols.
  • Are we embedded yet? (2) - detailed analysis of the obstacles that currently (as of mid 2023) need to be addressed in the field. Adds its own rich set of resources to be examined.

And there could be even more. The problem with such articles is that regardless of how exhaustive, introspective and well written they are, they appear to be a snapshot in time. After all not all authors keep their resources up to date - such is life.

One step further are the dedicated sites like this one. There is a bi-weekly newsletter available which really seems to encompass the trends in the said sector of the industry. Moreover the site's general approach tends to be the educational one so there articles such as this entry-level guide for newcomers to the field.

And of course I cannot miss in the end this absolute gem (a singular piece of acquiring knowledge through direct demonstration) for the Low Level Learning channel:


In short, what we see here is the non-standard usage of Rust directly on the Raspberry Pi's processor without any OS being the middle-man. What could go any lower than that?

Since this can't possibly be an exhaustive glimpse on the current state of the Rust language in the Embedded world any additions would come as their own posts.

Cheers!

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