Lib.rs

NetsBlox is a browser-based visual programming environment (based on Snap!) that extends the typical block-based programming features with internet and distributed computing tools such as RPCs (remote procedure calls) that access network resources (e.g., databases or web APIs), and message passing between projects over the internet.

netsblox-vm is a native Rust implementation of the NetsBlox code execution engine and runtime. This makes it possible to execute NetsBlox program code at blistering speeds on any device targeted by the Rust compiler. But more importantly, netsblox-vm has several extension APIs which make it possible to extend its features with new hardware peripheral access capabilities (e.g., controlling sensors and actuators through GPIO), all with safe, native Rust.

Features

netsblox-vm contains the following feature flags.

Note that if std-system is enabled, one of the TLS feature flags must also be enabled in order to connect to the NetsBlox server with StdSystem. The native-tls feature is enabled by default to support this on common desktop and server environments; however you may need to disable default features and explicitly opt into a different TLS option for other targets (e.g., Android or iOS).

no-std

netsblox-vm supports building in no-std environments by disabling the default std feature flag. However, the alloc crate is still required in this case.

[dependencies]
netsblox_vm = { version = "...", default-features = false }

Note that this precludes access to StdSystem, meaning a new implementation of System would be required for your target platform. If your target platform supports the standard library but not standard networking crates (e.g., esp32), you may use the std feature flag without the std-system feature flag, which will aid in creating a custom implementation of System.

Example

Some boilerplate code is required for using this crate to implement a fully-capable, isolated system. An example CLI program with basic stdout printing features is available here. Note that your dependencies should include both this crate, as well as the specific version of gc-arena used by this crate (or else any derived Collect implementations will be incompatible).

CLI Installation

This crate includes a binary called nb which serves as a shallow wrapper for the cli API with a default suite of syscall extensions. Note: if you need to create your own syscall extensions, you must do so in a separate binary using this crate as a dependency.

cargo install netsblox-vm