stm32-hal VS mspenv

Typestate-free HALs: This is in exchange for better ergonomics as the author claims. Only two HALs fall in this category right now which are the STM32-HAL & nRF-HAL.

As I worked with the stm32, as implied earlier, the HALs that I worked with were ones built around embedded-hal traits. Nevertheless, I came across a HAL at a certain point that adopted a different approach that felt more practical and easy to understand. This was the stm32-hal stm32-hal that I found to be more wholesome as it incroporated multiple families of the STM32 under a single HAL umbrella (my original expectation). The STM32-hal eliminates much of the trait confusion that I had encountered before. The thing is the stm32-hal does not seem to be mainstream yet. From what I understand, the HALs built with the mebedded-hal as a basis seem to be the ones mainly adopted by the embedded working group. Additionally, I am not sure if the stm32-hal has any equivalent counterparts for other manufacturer devices.

📝 At the time of writing this post, it came to my attention that there is an additional HAL that targets STM32 device families (the stm32-hal). From what I figure, right now there seem to be two approaches for developing HALs. The first approach is trait driven so to speak where the embedded-hal is used as a foundation. The second approach is more application-driven and provides a high-level API that targets several families of a device. However, this exists only for the stm32 through the stm32-hal. Right now, the first approach is what I found to be more widespread as it covers different microcontrollers and what this post is based on.

For STM32, check out the Peripheral Access Crates by the stm32-rs ream. For higher-level access, I wrote This HAL library for STM32. Works on most newer variants, and includes examples for specific peripherals, and simple applications.

Here's the repo if you're interested: https://github.com/breakthatbass/msp430-env

repo

The makefile is here in the root directory. I didn’t write a linker script or startup file fortunately. Those came with the tool chain. In the LDFLAGS variable in the makefile I have the linker script linked which is in the tool chain directory on my computer. But looking at the makefile now it looks like I never linked the startup file. Everything seems to work without it. I don’t really understand lol. I’ll have to look into that.