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Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

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Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#31

Post by marcosdumay »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7

These are all real issues with Rust, though it's worth noting that many of the integration challenges mentioned also apply to external code written in C and C++. Some of the survey responses highlight one of the biggest hurdles to rust adoption I've experienced though: Rust has an education problem. People dramatically overestimate the correctness of their [C/C++] code and underestimate the potential severity of fail…

The C and C++ ecosystems are suffering from a selection effect, in that the people that have any concern about their code being correct are trying to drop them, while the people comfortable with the language are all the ones that don't know about the problems.

I expect the careless unaware culture to get worse with time as more and more aware people manage to leave it.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#32

Post by worik »

atoav wrote: post #23

As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem. So let's say I happen to work with a MCU that is well supported in Rust, what if I want to connect it to a popular OLED display? Is there a library for that? If so, does it work? If it works, does it have the needed features? Now maybe I am incredibly lucky and all of that works, what about a popular gyro IC? Gran…

> Granted, there is probably some way to interface the Rust code with C code, but is that gonna work without turning it into a day of research?

I had a sense this a priority for the Rust Central Committee, so I had a quick look

https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/interoperability/c-with-...

I have not had to use it yet, looking for a reason.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#33

Post by znpy »

atoav wrote: post #23

As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem. So let's say I happen to work with a MCU that is well supported in Rust, what if I want to connect it to a popular OLED display? Is there a library for that? If so, does it work? If it works, does it have the needed features? Now maybe I am incredibly lucky and all of that works, what about a popular gyro IC? Gran…

> As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem.

Maybe the mindset of the industry as well?

Not sure if things have changed (and if so, how) but 9-10 years ago when i was in university I had an interview with a company that did embedded systems stuff. While talking about my competencies I mentioned I was able to create cross-toolchain if they were interested and the guy (he was kinda like the CTO iirc) abruptly interrupted me and just said:

"no. just no. we always and only use the vendor's BSP (board support package). we don't care about anything else. should there be any kind of issue we want to be able to ring them and get them to fix the issue.".

How do you get people (or an industry?) with such a mindset to just use something because it's trendy?

My guess is that industry will wait another 10-15 years until some vendor big enough ships a rust toolchain as a BSP. Other vendors will follow. Then Rust on embedded systems will flourish.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#34

Post by outworlder »

jcelerier wrote: post #28
AlotOfReading wrote: post #7

These are all real issues with Rust, though it's worth noting that many of the integration challenges mentioned also apply to external code written in C and C++. Some of the survey responses highlight one of the biggest hurdles to rust adoption I've experienced though: Rust has an education problem. People dramatically overestimate the correctness of their [C/C++] code and underestimate the potential severity of fail…

> People dramatically overestimate the correctness of their [C/C++] code and underestimate the potential severity of failures to meet that expectation Really depends on the field. I heard more than once in my life now that it's better to reboot every night than spend even an afternoon of engineering trying to fix memory leaks.

That's good when it's just about memory leaks. Your missile guidance code can have leaks as long as the missile completes the mission, since it will all be... "garbage collected" anyway.

It's not great when you have problems like use after free and pointers going to where they don't belong. Those can cause security vulnerabilities that rebooting won't fix.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#35

Post by the__alchemist »

atoav wrote: post #23

As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem. So let's say I happen to work with a MCU that is well supported in Rust, what if I want to connect it to a popular OLED display? Is there a library for that? If so, does it work? If it works, does it have the needed features? Now maybe I am incredibly lucky and all of that works, what about a popular gyro IC? Gran…

You will probably be on your own unfortunately regarding hardware support. Even when libraries exist, they are often not worth the fork/PR/modification process to accommodate your use case. I hope you like datasheets... This sounds rough, but I will highlight two upsides:

#1: You benefit from the nice tooling and language of rust #2: You are forced to learn how to use peripherals at a lower level than would otherwise be required. You will become adept at reading datasheets, and interacting with hardware, because you will write to registers directly while building your own abstractions.

The easy choice is to use C or C++.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#36

Post by adrianN »

atoav wrote: post #23

As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem. So let's say I happen to work with a MCU that is well supported in Rust, what if I want to connect it to a popular OLED display? Is there a library for that? If so, does it work? If it works, does it have the needed features? Now maybe I am incredibly lucky and all of that works, what about a popular gyro IC? Gran…

Interfacing C with Rust is actually a well supported use case.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#37

Post by the__alchemist »

tamimio wrote: post #26

Personally in the past ~2 years I have been trying to shift my code base to rust when it comes to robotics and drones software, the biggest issue is the integration part, most “addons” that you can integrate with the robots like Lidar and other sensors come with the usual SDKs in C/C++ or even python. Additionally, most of X-rust converters don’t really work so you end up rewriting it from scratch.

What sorts of parts? Most should have register-level APIs in the datasheet. That doesn't mean integrating is easy though, compared to the SDK.

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#38

Post by the__alchemist »

mips_r4300i wrote: post #24

How long before I can visually debug rust on MCUs with source level stepping in my IDE? Til then, no way to switch.

What do you mean by visually debug? If you install `probe-rs` and do `cargo run`, you can print whatever you want to console; not related to the IDE. (Not sure if this is what you're looking for, or something else)

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#39

Post by logicchains »

marcosdumay wrote: post #31
AlotOfReading wrote: post #7

These are all real issues with Rust, though it's worth noting that many of the integration challenges mentioned also apply to external code written in C and C++. Some of the survey responses highlight one of the biggest hurdles to rust adoption I've experienced though: Rust has an education problem. People dramatically overestimate the correctness of their [C/C++] code and underestimate the potential severity of fail…

The C and C++ ecosystems are suffering from a selection effect, in that the people that have any concern about their code being correct are trying to drop them, while the people comfortable with the language are all the ones that don't know about the problems. I expect the careless unaware culture to get worse with time as more and more aware people manage to leave it.

>the people comfortable with the language are all the ones that don't know about the problems.

Or the ones writing code where security doesn't matter, like HFT and video games (the former have no users, and the latter are basically impossible to make crack-resistant even if they're written entirely in Rust).

Re: Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems

#40

Post by jdiez17 »

atoav wrote: post #23

As a rust programmer that programs C++ on embedded, the main thing preventing adoption is the ecosystem. So let's say I happen to work with a MCU that is well supported in Rust, what if I want to connect it to a popular OLED display? Is there a library for that? If so, does it work? If it works, does it have the needed features? Now maybe I am incredibly lucky and all of that works, what about a popular gyro IC? Gran…

From my experience in the embedded world, the ecosystem doesn't seem super relevant. You may depend on certain libraries for encryption, compression, etc. but you're more likely than not to be writing drivers for all of your devices more or less from scratch.

Other than Arduino, which of course has pretty good support for many devices and is likely to work out of the box.

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