Embedded Rust and Serde: A Love Story

Or: Writing safe and efficient communication protocols with Embedded Rust

Who am I, and what do I do
Making devices talk together: A deceptively difficult
What are the problems?
- Dissimilar devices
- Packed Structures
- Alignment
- Performance
- Code Size
- Security and Memory Safety
Why not:
- Packed structures and shared headers?
- JSON?
- Tools like Protobuf/NanoPB
In general: things work until they don't
- Lots of odd edge cases
- Brittle to changing details of how messaging works
What is Rust?
- Explanation of Rust
- Explanation of Rust's support for Embedded
What is Serde?
- Utility in Rust for serializing and deserializing data
- Split between a standard "frontend", and customizable "backends"
- Enables the generation of code necessary to efficiently and safely SerDe data structures
- Compatible with no_std/bare metal Rust, when used with compatible backends
Okay, but I don't use Rust!
- Not a problem!
- Explanation of Rust's FFI story
- How to pragmatically integrate with existing projects
- Good use case to try Rust before starting major projects!
Show me the data!
- Performance graphs from Packed Structures/Serde/NanoPB
(IF I CAN GET CLIENT RELEASE):
- Interesting project that makes it easier to use Serde in non-Rust projects
Summary and Questions

Thoughts about pacing

Timing:

Introduction and problem statement (5m)
Cursed things in C Structs (5m)
- Ints
- Structs
- Enums
- Packed Structures
- Quick Summary (why we care, perf + portability)
What is Rust (5m)
- Short timeline
- Tech info
- Why it's relevant to embedded
What is Serde (5m)
- Serialization Framework for Rust
- Built on Rust's trait abstractions
- Split into two distinct components, frontend and backend
- Frontend: knows the data
- Backend: knows the format
- If your data is made out of types that fit the serde data model
Rust and CFFI (5m)
- Rust can be used to generate C static/dynamic libraries
- These libraries can be integrated into your build system
Summary, Results (5m)