I agree it can be annoying if you are on 'no_std' and you depend on a library that doesn't expose the 'std' features of its dependencies. Then you're stuck, but I'd consider that a bug of the dependency you're using.
Now it is important to make your feature be 'std' as opposed to 'no-std'. That is, features should generally represent additive APIs. This is because you can always enable a feature, but you can't disable one if a dependency has enabled it and hasn't provided a way to turn it off.
RFC2217 lets you change the port settings (for instance baud rate, parity, bit count...), control flow control lines or breaks directly, inspect modem and line state and more.
Yeah `impl TcpStream`
> lets you change the port settings
Might just be lack of familiarity with telnet, but wouldn't this be fairly easy to do `impl TcpStream`? In other words, why not just add this into espflash?