Learn a bit of embedded programming with Rust in a micro:bit v2 by aplanas

Description

micro:bit is a small single board computer with a ARM Cortex-M4 with the FPU extension, with a very constrain amount of memory and a bunch of sensors and leds.

The board is very well documented, with schematics and code for all the features available, so is an excellent platform for learning embedded programming.

Rust is a system programming language that can generate ARM code, and has crates (libraries) to access the micro:bit hardware. There is plenty documentation about how to make small programs that will run in the micro:bit.

Goals

Start learning about embedded programming in Rust, and maybe make some code to the small KS4036F Robot car from keyestudio.

Resources

• micro:bit
• KS4036F
• microbit technical documentation
• schematic
• impl Rust for micro:bit
• Rust Embedded MB2 Discovery Book
• nRF-HAL
• nRF Microbit-v2 BSP (blocking)
• knurling-rs
• C++ microbit codal
• microbit-bsp for Embassy
• Embassy

Diary

Day 1

• Start reading https://mb2.implrust.com/abstraction-layers.html
• Prepare the dev environment (cross compiler, probe-rs)
• Flash first code in the board (blinky led)
• Checking differences between BSP and HAL
• Compile and install a more complex example, with stack protection
• Reading about the simplicity of xtask, as alias for workspace execution
• Reading the CPP code of the official micro:bit libraries. They have a font!

Day 2

• There are multiple BSP for the microbit. One is using async code for non-blocking operations
• Download and study a bit the API for microbit-v2, the nRF official crate
• Take a look of the KS4036F programming, seems that the communication is multiplexed via I2C
• The motor speed can be selected via PWM (pulse with modulation): power it longer (high frequency), and it will increase the speed
• Scrolling some text
• Debug by printing! defmt is a crate that can be used with probe-rs to emit logs
• Start reading input from the board: buttons
• The logo can be touched and detected as a floating point value

Day 3

• A bit confused how to read the float value from a pin

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RMT.rs: High-Performance Registration Path for RMT using Rust by gbasso

Description

The SUSE Repository Mirroring Tool (RMT) is a critical component for managing software updates and subscriptions, especially for our Public Cloud Team (PCT). In a cloud environment, hundreds or even thousands of new SUSE instances (VPS/EC2) can be provisioned simultaneously. Each new instance attempts to register against an RMT server, creating a "thundering herd" scenario.

We have observed that the current RMT server, written in Ruby, faces performance issues under this high-concurrency registration load. This can lead to request overhead, slow registration times, and outright registration failures, delaying the readiness of new cloud instances.

This Hackweek project aims to explore a solution by re-implementing the performance-critical registration path in Rust. The goal is to leverage Rust's high performance, memory safety, and first-class concurrency handling to create an alternative registration endpoint that is fast, reliable, and can gracefully manage massive, simultaneous request spikes.

The new Rust module will be integrated into the existing RMT Ruby application, allowing us to directly compare the performance of both implementations.

Goals

The primary objective is to build and benchmark a high-performance Rust-based alternative for the RMT server registration endpoint.

Key goals for the week:

1. Analyze & Identify: Dive into the SUSE/rmt Ruby codebase to identify and map out the exact critical path for server registration (e.g., controllers, services, database interactions).
2. Develop in Rust: Implement a functionally equivalent version of this registration logic in Rust.
3. Integrate: Explore and implement a method for Ruby/Rust integration to "hot-wire" the new Rust module into the RMT application. This may involve using FFI, or libraries like rb-sys or magnus.
4. Benchmark: Create a benchmarking script (e.g., using k6, ab, or a custom tool) that simulates the high-concurrency registration load from thousands of clients.
5. Compare & Present: Conduct a comparative performance analysis (requests per second, latency, success/error rates, CPU/memory usage) between the original Ruby path and the new Rust path. The deliverable will be this data and a summary of the findings.

Resources

• RMT Source Code (Ruby):
  • https://github.com/SUSE/rmt
• RMT Documentation:
  • https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP7/html/SLES-all/book-rmt.html
• Tooling & Stacks:
  • RMT/Ruby development environment (for running the base RMT)
  • Rust development environment (rustup, cargo)
• Potential Integration Libraries:
  • rb-sys: https://github.com/oxidize-rb/rb-sys
  • Magnus: https://github.com/matsadler/magnus
• Benchmarking Tools:
  • k6 (https://k6.io/)
  • ab (ApacheBench)

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AI-Powered Unit Test Automation for Agama by joseivanlopez

The Agama project is a multi-language Linux installer that leverages the distinct strengths of several key technologies:

• Rust: Used for the back-end services and the core HTTP API, providing performance and safety.
• TypeScript (React/PatternFly): Powers the modern web user interface (UI), ensuring a consistent and responsive user experience.
• Ruby: Integrates existing, robust YaST libraries (e.g., yast-storage-ng) to reuse established functionality.

The Problem: Testing Overhead

Developing and maintaining code across these three languages requires a significant, tedious effort in writing, reviewing, and updating unit tests for each component. This high cost of testing is a drain on developer resources and can slow down the project's evolution.

The Solution: AI-Driven Automation

This project aims to eliminate the manual overhead of unit testing by exploring and integrating AI-driven code generation tools. We will investigate how AI can:

1. Automatically generate new unit tests as code is developed.
2. Intelligently correct and update existing unit tests when the application code changes.

By automating this crucial but monotonous task, we can free developers to focus on feature implementation and significantly improve the speed and maintainability of the Agama codebase.

Goals

• Proof of Concept: Successfully integrate and demonstrate an authorized AI tool (e.g., gemini-cli) to automatically generate unit tests.
• Workflow Integration: Define and document a new unit test automation workflow that seamlessly integrates the selected AI tool into the existing Agama development pipeline.
• Knowledge Sharing: Establish a set of best practices for using AI in code generation, sharing the learned expertise with the broader team.

Contribution & Resources

We are seeking contributors interested in AI-powered development and improving developer efficiency. Whether you have previous experience with code generation tools or are eager to learn, your participation is highly valuable.

If you want to dive deep into AI for software quality, please reach out and join the effort!

• Authorized AI Tools: Tools supported by SUSE (e.g., gemini-cli)
• Focus Areas: Rust, TypeScript, and Ruby components within the Agama project.

Interesting Links

• goose

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Exploring Rust's potential: from basics to security by sferracci

Description

This project aims to conduct a focused investigation and practical application of the Rust programming language, with a specific emphasis on its security model. A key component will be identifying and understanding the most common vulnerabilities that can be found in Rust code.

Goals

Achieve a beginner/intermediate level of proficiency in writing Rust code. This will be measured by trying to solve LeetCode problems focusing on common data structures and algorithms. Study Rust vulnerabilities and learning best practices to avoid them.

Resources

Rust book: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

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Learn how to use the Relm4 Rust GUI crate by xiaoguang_wang

Relm4 is based on gtk4-rs and compatible with libadwaita. The gtk4-rs crate provides all the tools necessary to develop applications. Building on this foundation, Relm4 makes developing more idiomatic, simpler, and faster.

https://github.com/Relm4/Relm4

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Kudos aka openSUSE Recognition Platform by lkocman

Description

Relevant blog post at news-o-o

I started the Kudos application shortly after Leap 16.0 to create a simple, friendly way to recognize people for their work and contributions to openSUSE. There’s so much more to our community than just submitting requests in OBS or gitea we have translations (not only in Weblate), wiki edits, forum and social media moderation, infrastructure maintenance, booth participation, talks, manual testing, openQA test suites, and more!

Goals

• Kudos under github.com/openSUSE/kudos with build previews aka netlify

• Have a kudos.opensuse.org instance running in production

• Build an easy-to-contribute recognition platform for the openSUSE community a place where everyone can send and receive appreciation for their work, across all areas of contribution.

• In the future, we could even explore reward options such as vouchers for t-shirts or other community swag, small tokens of appreciation to make recognition more tangible.

Resources

(Do not create new badge requests during hackweek, unless you'll make the badge during hackweek)

• Source code: openSUSE/kudos
• Badges: openSUSE/kudos-badges
• Issue tracker: kudos/issues

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go-git: unlocking SHA256-based repository cloning ahead of git v3 by pgomes

Description

The go-git library implements the git internals in pure Go, so that any Go application can handle not only Git repositories, but also lower-level primitives (e.g. packfiles, idxfiles, etc) without needing to shell out to the git binary.

The focus for this Hackweek is to fast track key improvements for the project ahead of the upstream release of Git V3, which may take place at some point next year.

Goals

• Add support for cloning SHA256 repositories.
• Decrease memory churn for very large repositories (e.g. Linux Kernel repository).
• Cut the first alpha version for go-git/v6.

Stretch goals

• Review and update the official documentation.
• Optimise use of go-git in Fleet.
• Create RFC/example for go-git plugins to improve extensibility.
• Investigate performance bottlenecks for Blame and Status.

Resources

• https://github.com/go-git/go-git/
• https://go-git.github.io/docs/

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Create a page with all devel:languages:perl packages and their versions by tinita

Description

Perl projects now live in git: https://src.opensuse.org/perl

It would be useful to have an easy way to check which version of which perl module is in devel:languages:perl. Also we have meta overrides and patches for various modules, and it would be good to have them at a central place, so it is easier to lookup, and we can share with other vendors.

I did some initial data dump here a while ago: https://github.com/perlpunk/cpan-meta

But I never had the time to automate this.

I can also use the data to check if there are necessary updates (currently it uses data from download.opensuse.org, so there is some delay and it depends on building).

Goals

• Have a script that updates a central repository (e.g. https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_metadata) with metadata by looking at https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj (check if there are any changes from the last run)
• Create a HTML page with the list of packages (use Javascript and some table library to make it easily searchable)

Resources

Results

• https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/
• https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta

Day 1

• First part of the code which retrieves data from https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj with submodules and creates a YAML and a JSON file.
• Repo: https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• Also a first version of the HTML is live: https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/

Day 2

• HTML Page has now links to src.opensuse.org and the date of the last update, plus a short info at the top
• Code is now 100% covered by tests: https://app.codecov.io/gh/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• I used the modern perl class feature, which makes perl classes even nicer and shorter. See example
• Tests
  • I tried out the mocking feature of the modern Test2::V0 library which provides call tracking. See example
  • I tried out comparing data structures with the new Test2::V0 library. It let's you compare parts of the structure with the like function, which only compares the date that is mentioned in the expected data. example

Day 3

• Added various things to the table
  • Dependencies column
  • Show popup with info for cpanspec, patches and dependencies
  • Added last date / commit to the data export.

Plan: With the added date / commit we can now daily check _ObsPrj for changes and only fetch the data for changed packages.

Day 4

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Mail client with mailing list workflow support in Rust by acervesato

Description

To create a mail user interface using Rust programming language, supporting mailing list patches workflow. I know, aerc is already there, but I would like to create something simpler, without integrated protocols. Just a plain user interface that is using some crates to read and create emails which are fetched and sent via external tools.

I already know Rust, but not the async support, which is needed in this case in order to handle events inside the mail folder and to send notifications.

Goals

• simple user interface in the style of aerc, with some vim keybindings for motions and search
• automatic run of external tools (like mbsync) for checking emails
• automatic run commands for notifications
• apply patch set from ML
• tree-sitter support with styles

Resources

• ratatui: user interface (https://ratatui.rs/)
• notify: folder watcher (https://docs.rs/notify/latest/notify/)
• mail-parser: parser for emails (https://crates.io/crates/mail-parser)
• mail-builder: create emails in proper format (https://docs.rs/mail-builder/latest/mail_builder/)
• gitpatch: ML support (https://crates.io/crates/gitpatch)
• tree-sitter-rust: support for mail format (https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter)

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git-fs: file system representation of a git repository by fgonzalez

Description

This project aims to create a Linux equivalent to the git/fs concept from git9. Now, I'm aware that git provides worktrees, but they are not enough for many use cases. Having a read-only representation of the whole repository simplifies scripting by quite a bit and, most importantly, reduces disk space usage. For instance, during kernel livepatching development, we need to process and analyze the source code of hundreds of kernel versions simultaneously.This is rather painful with git-worktrees, as each kernel branch requires no less than 1G of disk space.

As for the technical details, I'll implement the file system using FUSE. The project itself should not take much time to complete, but let's see where it takes me.

I'll try to keep the same design as git9, so the file system will look something like:

/mnt/git
      +-- ctl
      +-- HEAD
      |    +-- tree
      |    |    +--files
      |    |    +--in
      |    |    +--head
      |    |
      |    +-- hash
      |    +-- msg
      |    +-- parent
      |
      +-- branch
      |      |
      |      +-- heads
      |      |      +-- master
      |      |            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      |      +-- remotes
      |             +-- origin
      |                     +-- master
      |                            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      +-- object
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535f # blob contents
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535c
                  +-- [tree contents, see HEAD/tree]
            +-- 3f5dbc97ae6caba9928843ec65fb3089b96c9283
                  +-- [commit files, see HEAD]

So, if you wanted to look at the commit message of the current branch, you could simply do:

cat /mnt/git/HEAD/msg 

No collaboration needed. This is a solo project.

Goals

• Implement a working prototype.

• Measure and improve the performance if possible. This step will be the most crucial one. User space filesystems are slower by nature.

Resources

https://orib.dev/git9.html

https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/fuse/fuse.html

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