wg VS gdnative

Inspired by James Munns's call, and as 2023 is coming to an end, I figure it's a good opportunity to reflect and look forward to 2024. It's been a bit over 1.5 years since I embarked on my embedded Rust journey and it's been nothing less than exciting since. So here it goes.

Because you are an embedded guy. There is the https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg working-group. Rust on embedded is really on a got track forward. There are many chips/vendors that are supported both in no std / std rust world, but still there is a lot of niche things where you can actively help to be the first to get it run in Rust.

To specifically answer your question, here:

* <http://www.areweembeddedyet.com/>

It currently redirects to:

* <https://rust-embedded.org>

Which doesn't really contain anything other than a link to <https://github.com/rust-embedded>.

(via <https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg/issues/15>)

Then the Rust Embedded workgroup provides: - Direction on how to using generics and zero-sized types to achieve functional safety - svd2rust, which provides safe abstractions to peripheral access from SVD files and achieves this functional safety - The embedded HAL spec, which makes porting to different vendors/hardware easy - Peripheral access controllers and HALs for various vendors & hardware

The Rust Embedded Devices Working Group curates a list of useful embedded Rust resources, including Peripheral Access Crates (autogenerated from SVD files), embedded-hal Implementation Crates (hand-written libraries implementing the traits (interfaces) specified by the embedded-hal), and Board Support Crates.

You should also look at https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg/issues/41 and https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/55011#issuecomment-429336055.

Here's an interesting discussion, consolidated here. My view is you should use a restricted scope atomic (as best as can be supported) and interact with that through a handler struct. I.e. no global state.

Most of the issues are explained in EWG RFC 419. The TL;DR is that some resources need to implement Send to be usable from interrupts, but they must not be sent across cores.

It's a little less standard use, but Godot has been used to build application guis, which could be paired with rust bindings to implement app logic. I can't speak to reproducibility/scalability, but Godot's ui is extremely solid, and I'd probably choose that over Bevy until Bevy's ui progress matures.

Adding onto this, I successfully written a game in Godot using gdnative / gdext. I started with a split approach using gdscript and rust for CPU intensive but found that the API layer was slow at transferring large amounts of data (serialization?). I ended up rewriting it in all rust and it worked like a charm. I was able to target native and web assembly, the web assembly was much slower but worked on the browser.

Check this: https://github.com/tomuxmon/bevy_roguelike if you are still into bevy. Scheduling is a bit bork and I have not found time to port it to latest bevy. But most of the systems should work fine(if used on latest bevy). But again. If you want faster result go with something like Godot. In fact, just go with Godot. It is mature, easy to start, no lock in(free and MIT license), a lot of learning material. Also with Godot you can also use Rust https://godot-rust.github.io/. Ditch Unity (do not have time to explain 😅). Have fun!

Bevy Godot-Rust

> Same for Godot.

While likely true that it's "Unlikely to ever be as supported" as the 4 officially supported languages[0] ("GDScript, C#, and, via its GDExtension technology, C and C++."), Godot's GDExtension technology is specifically intended for use in adding support for other languages.

The most relevant tracking issue for Rust is presumably:

* <https://github.com/godot-rust/gdnative/issues/824>

Which links to:

* <https://github.com/godot-rust/gdextension>

[0] https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.0/getting_started/step_by_...

...Godot v3.x has Rust support via godot-rust and Godot v4.0 is released as of this month?

I was curious, and looked it up. Nothing built in, but there's an interesting project that works with godot: https://godot-rust.github.io/

There's people working on it: https://godot-rust.github.io/