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 By Example (RBE) home page here:
MIT mirror of Rust introduction by chapters:
^ Organizations for Rust
^ Installation and Other Specific Notes
Install Rust on Ubuntu:
Adoption and popularity of Rust:
2025-12-16
Rust crates
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
^ Rust for Embedded Systems
Books on Rust language for embedded systems, and a link to a specific topic regarding memory:
(1) https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/
(2) https://docs.rust-embedded.org/discovery/microbit/07-uart/send-a-single-byte.html
(3) https://docs.rust-embedded.org/discovery-mb2/
(4) https://docs.rust-embedded.org/embedonomicon/memory-layout.html
Reference (2) and (3) are, or appear to be, first and second editions of the Rust book on embedded development with the Microbit dev board as the readers' example and target hardware. Note as well that Rust Embedded Discovery-mb2 has its code repository at:
Rust crates for STM32:
^ 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.)
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:
Some kind of project template for Rust projects for Microbit-v2:
^ Crate Microbit-V2
^ Panic Handling
When setting panic compilation to 'abort' on panic, may be necessary to write one's own panic function:
How Rust panic is implemented . . . in crates core and std:
^ Rust General Topics
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:
^ Potentially Useful Crates
Rust Embassy crate to convey debug messages over USB . . .
^ Linker Flags
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
^ 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]