origin-stdio is an alternative std-like implementation built on origin.
At this time, it only works on Linux (x86-64, aarch64, riscv64, 32-bit x86),
requires Rust nightly, lacks full std compatibility, and is overall
experimental. But it supports threads and stuff.
Quick start
In an empty directory, on Linux, with Rust nightly, run these commands:
This will produce a crate and print "Hello, world!".
Yes, you might say, I could have already done that, with just the first and
last commands. But this version uses origin to start and stop the program,
and rustix to do the printing.
And beyond that, origin-studio uses origin to start and stop threads,
rustix-futex-sync and lock_api to do locking for threads,
rustix-dlmalloc to do memory allocation, and unwinding to do stack
unwinding, so it doesn't use libc at all.
What are those commands doing?
cargo init
This creates a new Rust project containing a "Hello, world!" program.
cargo add origin_studio
This adds a dependency on origin_studio, which is this crate.
cargo add compiler_builtins --features=mem
This adds a dependency on compiler_builtins, which is a crate that provides
definitions of library functions that rustc and libcore use. The mem
feature enables implementations of memcpy, memset, strlen, and others.
echo 'fn main() { println!("cargo:rustc-link-arg=-nostartfiles"); }' > build.rs
This creates a build.rs file that arranges for -nostartfiles to be passed
to the link command, which disables the use of libc's crt1.o and other startup
object files. This allows origin to define its own symbol named _start which
serves as the program entrypoint, and handle the entire process of starting the
program itself.
sed -i '1s/^/#![no_std]\n#![no_main]\norigin_studio::no_problem!();\n\n/' src/main.rs
This inserts three lines to the top of src/main.rs:
#![no_std], which disables the use of Rust's standard library implementation, since origin-studio provides its own implementation that using rustix and origin.#![no_main], which tells Rust to disable its code that calls the user'smainfunction, sinceorigin-studiowill be handling that.origin_studio::no_problem!()inserts code to set up a Rust panic handler, and optionally a global allocator (with the "alloc" feature).
cargo run --quiet
This runs the program, which will be started by origin, prints "Hello, world!"
using origin-studio's println! macro, which uses origin-studio's
std::io::stdout() and std::io::Write and rustix-futex-sync's Mutex to
do the locking, and rustix to do the actual I/O system call, and ends the
program, using origin.
Similar crates
Other alternative implementations of std include steed, tiny-std and veneer.
mustang and eyra are crates that use origin to build a libc implementation that can slide underneath existing std builds, rather than having their own std implementations.
relibc also includes a Rust implementation of program and thread startup and shutdown.
Why?
Right now, this is a demo of how to use origin. If you're interested in
seeing this grow into something specific, or interested in seeing projects
which might be inspired by this, please reach out!