Rust-written Real-Time Tasks on Eclipse ThreadX

This repository demonstrates how to compile and execute Rust-written tasks on the Eclipse ThreadX Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). The primary target platform for this project is the Arm Cortex-R5 processor, showcasing the integration of Rust with ThreadX for high-performance real-time applications.

Build and Run

Visit the Arm GNU Toolchain page and choose the AArch32 bare-metal target (arm-none-eabi) toolchain variant compatible with your development environment.

Install Rust via rustup (Recommended)

$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Then, enable bare-metal target for CPUs in the Armv7-R architecture family.

$ rustup target add armv7r-none-eabihf

Run make to build both ThreadX and Rust code from source. Run make run to launch Rust-written tasks on ThreadX via QEMU.

Building does not require libclang; the threadx-sys crate ships pre-generated FFI bindings. After upgrading ThreadX or modifying its headers, regenerate the bindings with:

$ make bindgen

This requires libclang to be installed. The updated bindings are written to threadx-sys/src/bindings.rs and should be committed.

Development

The project uses cargo xtask for build automation:

$ cargo xtask run      # Build release binary and run on QEMU (interactive)
$ cargo xtask smoke    # Marker-driven boot and runtime validation
$ cargo xtask size     # Binary size breakdown (text/data/bss per object)
$ cargo xtask help     # Show all commands and options

Makefile shortcuts are available for common operations:

$ make smoke           # Equivalent to cargo xtask smoke
$ make size            # Equivalent to cargo xtask size

Environment variables:

• QEMU_TIMEOUT - QEMU timeout in seconds (default: 30)
• QEMU_VERBOSE - Show full UART output during smoke tests
• SMOKE_QUICK - Skip slow markers for faster iteration

The smoke test validates deterministic markers emitted during boot and runtime: Running ThreadX → PRIMITIVES_OK → APP_READY → TICK_OK → PIPE_OK → MTX_OK

Licence

This project is available under a permissive MIT-style license. Use of this source code is governed by a MIT license that can be found in the LICENSE file.