static-alloc

General purpose global allocator(s) with static storage.

Goal and Target Platform

Provides allocator based data structures for extremely resource constrained environments where the only memory guaranteed is your program's image in memory as provided by the loader. This includes a Slab-allocator and a FixedVec.

Possible use cases are OS-less development, embedded, bootloaders (even stage0/1 maybe, totally untested). The primary goals are minimalism, simplicity, and correctness.

This library aims to provide functionality similar to the standard alloc crate. It is obviously far from complete, and contributions with bug fixes or more allocators are welcome. As a general principle those should provide mechanisms, not policy, have a usable direct api that does not require them to override any singleton such as the single global allocator.

Feature requests and 'help' issues will be closed, drafts will be decided on the spot. Whatever submitted should have simplicity and composability in mind, ideas that can not be put into a draft form are likely too complex or not focussed enough. PRs should be extremely reluctant with introducing new dependencies and should contain no non-optional dependency.

Usage

As a global allocator for alloc:

use static_alloc::Slab;

#[global_allocator]
static A: Slab<[u8; 1 << 16]> = Slab::uninit();

fn main() {
    // Vec occupying `1 << 7` bytes
    let v = vec![0xdeadbeef_u32; 32];

    // Can also allocate values directly.
    // Even without `alloc::boxed::Box`.
    let buffer: &'static mut [u32; 32] = A.leak([0; 32])
        .unwrap();
    buffer.copy_from_slice(&v);
}

As local memory pools for fixed capacity FixedVec:

use static_alloc::{FixedVec, Uninit};
use core::mem::MaybeUninit;

let mut pool = MaybeUninit::<[u8; 1024]>::uninit();
let memory = Uninit::from(&mut pool);
let mut vector = FixedVec::from_available(memory);

let mut num = 0;
// Push mutable ref, not `'static`, `Copy` nor `Clone`!
vector.push(&mut num);
*vector[0] = 42;

drop(vector);
assert_eq!(num, 42);

Additional

This project is mainly MIT licensed. You may alternatively choose the Unlicense instead in which case the copyright headers signify the parts dedicated to the public domain to the fullest possible extent instead.