Rust

Notes on Rust programming language

Overview

This local page about the programming language of Rust aims to answer among other questions: How suitable is Rust for embedded development?

• Rust

Rust By Example (RBE) home page here:

• https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/

MIT mirror of Rust introduction by chapters:

• https://web.mit.edu/rust-lang_v1.25/arch/amd64_ubuntu1404/share/doc/rust/html/book/first-edition/traits.html

^ Organizations for Rust

• https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vwwc4m/announcement_rustedu/

• https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~bart/courses.html

• https://github.com/pdx-cs-rust/mixy/blob/main/Makefile

^ Installation and Other Specific Notes

Install Rust on Ubuntu:

• https://phoenixnap.com/kb/install-rust-ubuntu

Adoption and popularity of Rust:

• https://www.embedded.com/embedded-rust-where-are-we-today/

2025-12-16

Rust crates

• https://users.rust-lang.org/t/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-crate-as-translation-unit-instead-of-a-source-file/11423/4

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^ Rust for Embedded Systems

Rust language for embedded systems:

• https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/

• https://docs.rust-embedded.org/embedonomicon/memory-layout.html

Rust crates for STM32:

• https://crates.io/crates/stm32f4xx-hal

• https://crates.io/crates/stm32f4

^ Specific development boards and Rust

Rust Embassy project has board support crates for certain MCU families. Ted found a crate or sub-project named `stm32f0` which is adaptable to support STMicro's stm32f401re. Needed only to change the MCU name from something other than `stm32f401re` to this MCU name in the Cargo.toml file.

(Thought the Cargo.toml file referenced an STM part with "7" in the name but see https://github.com/embassy-rs/embassy/blob/main/examples/stm32f0/Cargo.toml which is similar to the starting point Ted found.)

• https://github.com/embassy-rs/embassy/tree/main/examples

Charles Muchene is a software developer working in Rust and other languages. He shares an article on Medium dot com and a github project which presents a minimal start-up program in Rust for the Microbit V2:

• https://medium.com/@charlesmuchene/micro-bits-d-9f273c9462dd

• https://github.com/charlesmuchene/minimal-rust-microbit-starter/tree/main

Crate Microbit-V2

• ^ https://crates.io/crates/microbit-v2

^ Panic Handling

• https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/2738

When setting panic compilation to 'abort' on panic, may be necessary to write one's own panic function:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75310867/rust-no-std-static-lib-panic-handler

How Rust panic is implemented . . . in crates core and std:

• https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/panic-implementation.html

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^ Rust General Topic

Following sections touch on Rust language features, use and practice. These notes are not specific to embedded development.

^ Crates versus Modules

Excellent article at MIT explaining Rust crates and modules, and how to organize them:

• https://web.mit.edu/rust-lang_v1.25/arch/amd64_ubuntu1404/share/doc/rust/html/book/first-edition/crates-and-modules.html

^ Questions to Answer

(1) For what is Rust language 'derive' keyword used?

  #[derive(Clone)]

  #[derive(Default)]

(2) How is the `.await` method working, and is this kind of element called a method in Rust?

(3) Rust `match` construct, is this equal to C switch statement?

(4) what does at or near top of source file `use defmt::*;` mean?

(5) Rust `impl` a keyword? Seeing this in lines like `impl CanTxChannel`.

(6) `.await.unwrap()` versus `.await`?

(7) What is the following forward arrow operator in this context?:

  pub async fn <function_name>(var declarations) -> () { ... }

(8) What mean the following top of file lines?:

#![no_std]
#![no_main]

^ References Rust and Embassy

• https://docs.embassy.dev/embassy-sync/git/default/blocking_mutex/raw/struct.CriticalSectionRawMutex.html

• https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/keywords.html

• https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/inline-assembly.html