Distributor Guide

Distributor Guide

This guide is for developers who want to port RTIC to new hardware, create a new distribution, or write a new compilation pass.

It assumes you are familiar with the user-facing syntax described in the User Guide and Syntax Reference.

What is a distributor?

A distributor crate:

1. Implements the low-level, target-specific backend traits defined by rtic-core (and optionally by passes such as rtic-sw-pass).
2. Registers the compilation passes it wants to use via RticMacroBuilder.
3. Exposes the final #[rtic::app] proc macro.

The result is a self-contained RTIC distribution that application developers can depend on.

Important scope note

This repository maintains the core framework and a set of reference distributions. New distributions for additional hardware targets are expected to live in their own crates and repositories. They are not merged into this repository.

Guide sections

• Architecture — how the core, passes, and distributions fit together.
• Writing Compilation Passes — implementing the RticPass trait.
• Writing Distributions — implementing backends and exposing #[rtic::app].
• Multibin and Multipac — building multi-binary and multi-PAC applications.

Core concepts

• RticMacroBuilder — the API used by every distribution to assemble the macro pipeline.
• CorePassBackend — the target-specific interface for the core code generation phase.
• RticPass — the interface for syntax-transformation passes.
• Backend extension traits — passes such as rtic-sw-pass may define their own backend traits (e.g., SwPassBackend) for target-specific details.

Start with Architecture for the big picture.