The Rust on ESP Book

(docs.espressif.com)

63 points | by AlexeyBrin 4 days ago

3 comments

  • iconara 4 days ago
    The [page on testing][1] suggests this:

    > Where possible, and where it makes sense, you should try to test as much as possible on your host machine, not on the target device.

    When I have tried this I have encountered multiple problems, first that the Rust test framework requires std, making it convoluted writing test code – but when working around that using conditional compilation, I run into other things like the `esp-hal` depending on crates that won't compile on the host.

    What is the recommended way to test on the host?

      [1]: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/rust/book/application-development/testing.html
    • bigfishrunning 1 hour ago
      Especially for embedded work (but for regular software too!) I've bought into the "sans-io pattern" for a lot of the software i write anymore

      https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/how-to-sans-io.html

      Keeping all of the actual hardware/network/io interface code separate really makes writing unit tests and porting to different computers much simpler

      • tylerc230 55 minutes ago
        I do something similar. I have all my esp/idf code in one crate and all my business logic in a separate crate. The business crate has no dependencies that won’t compile/run on the host. This is where all my tests live.
      • tredre3 53 minutes ago
        This is good advice however it should be noted that many of espressif's other purely software components depend on esp-hal, so you still want it to compile if you use any of espressif's provided components.
    • officialchicken 39 minutes ago
      I don't use the the builtin testing framework, or std, and I often explicitly use a no-heap crate. Check out Embassy and you'll be free to ignore pretty almost everything suggested here, especially when developing and testing. I create a separate [bin] for each test (I usually run out of flash to fit all the tests into a single binary), and a few lines of bash/python to make a test runner/reporter for all the flashing and running of tests. Sometimes I flash up to 50 times a day and haven't lost an MCU (AVR-Rust, ESP-Rust, STM-Rust) yet due to too many writes.

      [0] https://github.com/embassy-rs/embassy

    • devmor 1 hour ago
      This is a constant issue for me in every facet of embedded development - with the sole exception of devices that can easily be tested in a qemu environment.

      I would also love to hear that the authors of this book suggest.

  • effnorwood 21 minutes ago
    BUN in oven
  • jauntywundrkind 1 hour ago
    awesome to see this under espressif.com! that's so fantastic.

    not to the point here, but i wonder what Zephyr would have been like if Rust had been more of a thing at the time. that's not really possible, as from my understanding it derived from Wind River Systems' donated Rocket OS, which i think predates Rust (which is not a new language!). still an interesting what if to me: zephyr seems to be the embedded os with the best wireless support by a country mile, have a lot of companies targeting it (often alas forking it rather than going upstream): it holds my interest the most.