stm32-rs VS probe-run

Developing code at the PAC, well, requires a PAC crate for the targeted controller. For the STM32 there exists a repo for all the supported PACs. These PACs are all generated using a command line tool called svd2rust. svd2rust grabs what is called an svd file and converts it into a PAC exposing API allowing access to peripheral registers. An SVD file is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) formatted file describing the hardware features of a device, listing all the peripherals and the registers associated with them. SVD files typically are released by microcontroller manufacturers.

In real world software, 99% of code is gluing preexisting lower-level functions together. In C/C++, the unsafe is implicit and needlessly covers everything. In Rust, the unsafe is only needed for the 1%.

You can safely implement a doubly-linked list in Rust, using unsafe, and that list can offer a safe interface so that the next higher level of code does not need to use unsafe. In fact, one doubly-linked list implementation that provides a safe interface is in the Rust standard library: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/collections/struct.LinkedList.... . Most people do not rewrite std::list in C++ either.

Much of the Linux kernel really is the same: normal C code (maybe slightly more complicate than average userspace code, and definitely more carefully reviewed, but definitely not magic), that depends on extra carefully written lower level primitives that are _much_ more complicated internally than they appear from the outside (like the memory allocator, printk, RCU, etc.).

Rust is powerful enough to have libraries for register level access to micro-controllers (e.g. https://github.com/stm32-rs/stm32-rs), that encode moderately complex access rules safely in the type system (e.g. which specific set of bits is read-only or write-only, with which particular values (with nice human-readable names, even!), in which particular states of a state machine depending on other bits), all while allowing bypassing the restrictions with a simple unsafe keyword without even giving up on the nice API.

On the C/C++ side, I've used libopencm3, MBED, CMSIS, and everyone's favorite toy, Arduino. They're, in different ways, all much more mature and complete than anything Rust has today, but nothing comes even remotely close to Rust in terms of safety and long term potential.

Packages: Where would I start with e.g. running Ada on a stm32? Resources are just a bit tough to find, and there's only a single stm32 package on Alire (which was inspired by cargo). But Rust has easy to find PACs and HALs for everything in the family, plus an official guide to setting up a project, including HIL debugging and unit testing on qemu, that takes about 15 minutes.

> (I threw out all my C/C++ books about 15 years ago - oops!).

The future is here for STM32: https://github.com/stm32-rs/stm32-rs

Specifically these Rust register definitions are being auto-generated using SVD files published by the chip vendors (https://www.keil.com/pack/doc/CMSIS/SVD/html/index.html). For stm32 for example there are the auto-generated register definitions: https://github.com/stm32-rs/stm32-rs and then the HAL layers on top that try to build easy to use tools on top of the registers (e.g. an SPI or USART type with write and read functions). e.g. https://github.com/stm32-rs/stm32f4xx-hal for the stm32f4xx line

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.

Patches: https://github.com/stm32-rs/stm32-rs/tree/master/devices

Install probe-run (this is optional, but makes flashing easier)

This made me want to try getting some of these tools running. Probe run looked so handy, but it just doesn't work for me.

For flashing, Check out Kurling's Probe-run, and related tools like defmt, as well as their app template.

You don't need a USB file system for a convenient dev experience. In fact you can achieve an even more integrated experience with Rust today, on essentially any Cortex-M microcontroller if you set up probe-run. It makes cargo run flash and run the code on your microcontroller and can even be invoked with rust-analyzer's run button or an IDE command.

I've been looking for a way to debug my application like I would from GDB (ie: set breakpoints, inspect registers, step, etc.) but I haven't found any documentation on how to accomplish this with probe-run.