Upcoming esp-rs changes

[tom-borcin]

Dear esp-rs community, we are excited to announce upcoming changes aimed at both streamlining our repositories and enhancing the usability of our Rust language support. Our team recognizes the importance of innovation and support of new chips and capabilities they bring, but we also believe in good software. Our attention will shift from adding new devices to improving our existing code base and user experience. In other words, we want to improve a full Rust development stack. Besides, users in need of the cutting edge of Espressif technology will always find ESP-IDF available.

While our company will continue to support newer chips, we will focus our development on current available devices (notably, ESP32-C6) and esp-hal repository. Other repositories will be kept ‘as current’, and will be only maintained. Repositories that are no longer active or redundant will be archived. Some repositories will be merged or moved to organize relevant code and improve the content management both for us and our users.

During this transition, you may notice changes to repository structures and content. Our aim is to minimize disruption and to ensure essential resources remain easily accessible. We also want to emphasize that ESP-HAL has moved forward within Espressif and matured from a technology development project to a Product being built. Why is that important? It is an important step that reinforces our commitment to deliver, as stated, good software.

As we move forward with our product, we welcome your feedback and suggestions regarding these changes. These inputs have been the guiding light to our strategy. Please reach out to us through:

• Matrix channel: https://matrix.to/#/#esp-rs:matrix.org
• Biweekly community meetings. Next meeting can be found on: https://github.com/esp-rs/rust/discussions
• Comment in this announcement

Repositories to be archived (with our reasoning!)

• esp-alloc – package moved into esp-hal, repository already archived
• esp-web-flash-server – doesn’t seem to be used
• espmonitor – appears to be unmaintained
• esp-serial-dbg – doesn’t seem to be used
• esp-mbedtls – provide working example using Rustls and archive

Repositories to be moved (with our reasoning!)

• riscv-atomic-emulation-trap – appears to be unmaintained, move to rust-embedded-community
• xtensa-atomic-emulation-trap – appears to be unmaintained, move to rust-embedded-community

Repositories to be merged

• esp-backtrace – merge into esp-hal
• esp-ieee802154 – remove blobs and merge remaining parts into esp-hal
• esp-println – merge into esp-hal
• esp-storage – merge into esp-hal
• esp-wifi – take out and keep esp-wifi-sys, merge remaining into esp-hal