We believe it offers a new combination of features that might be interesting:
- It supports writing applications as both async and threaded code, mix-and-match.
- It helps a lot in reducing boilerplate. Networking, threads & multi-core suppport, random numbers, flash storage are all readily available, with a sane and usually customizable default configuration.
- It helps writing portable applications. Ariel applications start out being fully ported to all supported boards, then get specialized. This might be interesting to library authors as well, for simplified testing on multiple platforms.
- It helps handling the little differences between MCUs. E.g, rustc target configuration, using `defmt` or not, `probe-rs` or `esp-flash`, are just build system flags. Ariel OS' meta build system handles the necessary Cargo and tooling configuration.
- It integrates `embedded-test` for turn-key testing on real hardware.
- It's all Embassy & smoltcp & embedded-hal(-async) & embedded-nal(-async) & ... under the hood, and it is easy to not use the abstractions if needed.
What we're working on right now or very soon:
- building on stable Rust
- BLE support
- a nice DSL for defining boards, aiming at no-code porting of applications
- low power handling
- a native "port" where Ariel can run as Linux/OSX application
We're at the beginning, but think that Ariel OS might already be useful to many of you, especially for reducing boiler plate and getting started more quickly.
Let us know what you think!
Join us on Matrix in https://matrix.to/#/#ariel-os:matrix.org.
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