Rust ESP32 Community Meeting 2022-03-15

[georgik]

Please add topics and links to this discussion.

The meeting is scheduled 15st March 2022 - 5pm CET/GMT+1 via Google Meet. The meeting invite is automatically sent to attendees of previous meetings. If you'd like to join, please notify us at https://matrix.to/#/#esp-rs-community-meetins:matrix.org

You can find information from previous meeting at https://github.com/esp-rs/rust/discussions

[jessebraham]

esp-template

• Created a template for use with cargo-generate which uses the no_std HAL
  • https://github.com/jessebraham/esp-template

esp8266 / esp8266-hal

• Updated xtensa-lx/xtensa-lx-rt dependencies and released new version of PAC
• Update HAL to use new PAC, updated other dependencies and edition
  • No release yet, likely will soon
  • Still not sure if this should live in esp-hal or not, but probably yes?

serialport-rs

• Got permissions to publish on crates.io!
• Decided on which targets to run in CI, updated config/README accordingly
• Reviewed and merged some additional small PRs

espflash

• Fixed a bug which prevented the board-info subcommand from being invoked for espflash
• Added a fix for an upstream bug in crossterm which caused Ctrl-c to stop working for the monitor in Windows
• Worked on improving serial port-related error messages to be more clear about the actual problem
  • Re-work the serial error types to make the problem more clear espflash#139
• Added command-line options for --flash-mode, --flash-size, and --flash-freq
  • Customize firmware image header espflash#141

miscellaneous

• Updated the page in the book on bare metal development to mention new esp-pacs/esp-hal repos
• Fixed a bug in the xtensa-toolchain action where the presence of a rust-toolchain.toml file specifying the esp channel caused the action to fail
  • No release tag yet, but you can use commit hash
• New SVD released for ESP32-S3 with fixes for SPI and other peripherals
• Added the RNG peripheral to all PACs and implemented driver in esp-hal

[georgik]

Build updates:

• Rust toolchain with Xtensa support 1.59.0.1: https://github.com/esp-rs/rust-build/releases/tag/v1.59.0.1

Wokwi:

• @urish added new Rust C3 support with example: https://wokwi.com/projects/325484699259503188
• Containerfiles for builders: https://github.com/wokwi/wokwi-builders/tree/main/esp32-rust
• hint: use F1 for command palette, it's possible to download flashable binary from simulator

Windows:

• recommendation for Windows users to avoid long path problem
• use subst r:\ c:\my-rust-project
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/subst
• the command maps directory to new drive
• the command avoids all problems with short paths problem which is pretty complex and deeply rooted in all tools like git, CMake, CCache, CMD or OS itself
• note: Solution with UNC Paths does not work, because CMake is generating CMD based scripts :-/

GUI based installer - inception of Rust version:

• goal: provide multiplatform UI based deployment tool for users to bootstrap environment
• desired state: Visual Studio Installer level of developer experience
• current solution: Inno Setup - idf-installer - https://github.com/espressif/idf-installer + idf-env to deploy ESP-IDF & Rust - https://github.com/espressif/idf-env
• note: just to avoid confusion, this is not replacement of build system embuild, it's bootstrapping tool on vanilla computer without deployed Rust or ESP-IDF.
• evaluation of Tauri - seems promising - small, multiplatform, HTML5 based UI - https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

[pedrominatel]

Rust Board

• Boards arrived in Portugal! (2022-03-14 19 pcs)
• USB connector soldering
• HW Testing and validation
  • Preliminary validation OK (ongoing)
    • Battery
    • I2C bus
    • Embedded LED
    • USB
    • BOOT & RESET

[urish]

Boards look terrific!

[MabezDev]

• Closed Link error when using some std::fs functions #100 by
  • Implementing lstat in esp-idf-sys, will be implemented in esp-idf (aliased to stat) eventually.
  • ftruncate has been added in esp-idf v5, backport to 4.4 will come soon.
• Closed File::metadata()?.len() returns 0 #92 by
  • Mismatch of the libc::stat struct on the C and Rust side. Fixed in Correct the size of certain types on espidf platform rust-lang/libc#2708
  • Required changes applied to our fork (see 1.59.0.0.1 version), upstream issue: espidf: fix stat rust-lang/rust#94609
• Final boss: Can't read files using fs::read and fs::read_to_string #96
  • Looks to be a codegeneration issue, no issues on RISCV at any opt level, works on Xtensa at opt level 0, but with optimizations enabled it produces odd results.
  • See this comment for the results: Can't read files using fs::read and fs::read_to_string #96 (comment)
• More progress on this long standing issue: LLVM ERROR: Error while trying to spill A9 from class AR #87
  • Managed to reproduce the error with llc, and get a stack trace of the LLVM passes!

[bjoernQ]

esp-hal

• I2C support got merged
• SPI master implemented, got merged
• fixed bug in enabling interrupts for ESP32-C3
  • only the last enabled interrupt was enabled
• fixed bug: 2nd stage bootloader boot was broken for ESP32-C3
  • entry point was set wrong
• turned the precompiled RISCV assembly code into inline assembly

esp-idf-sys

• bindings for WiFi provisioning are now generated

[SergioGasquez]

Development Container with Visual Studio Code integration

• Created 2 repositories:
  • esp-rs-container: Container with all the necessary dependencies, image is published in dockerhub
  • esp-rs-devcontainer: Development environment which uses the previous container with Visual Studio Code integration
• Allows the user to have all the necessary tools to develop from an IDE:
  • Visual Studio Code has the proper extensions and settings for Rust development
  • Includes default bootloader and partition files for esp32, esp32s2, esp32s3 and esp32c3
  • Generates project with cargo generate using esp-idf-template when running the devcontainer
• Further Work:
  • Research methods to flash from the container
  • Test the devcontainer repository in GitHub codespaces
  • Test the devcontainer in other platforms

[ivmarkov]

• Edge Frame (a utility library for implementing Embedded Web UIs with Rust Yew) ported to Bulma

  • Current code size (including Bulma) < 180K compressed. If we keep it that way, this might turn out to be a viable approach

• WIP - Experimental WebSocket support (sync and async) with ESP-IDF HTTPD server

[N3xed]

• Small update for External components discussion esp-idf-sys#72

[JurajSadel]

espflash

• started working on QEMU support espflash#79
• the working prototype should be ready soon

wsl2 and USB ports

• steps https://kumekay.com/compiling-custom-kernel-for-wsl2/
• usbipd-win didn't work for me
• VirtualHere USB Client works fine

Question

• esp-idf-sys building ESP-IDFv4.3.2 which doesn't have some patches, native build is failing, for example: Error when building on Linux aarch64 esp-idf-sys#14 (comment). What should we do about it?

[georgik]

Next meeting: 29th March 2022 - 5pm CET/GMT+1
Note: 27th March 2022 - switch to summer time in Europe