Origin Studio

An alternative `std`-like implementation built on Origin

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:

cargo init
cargo add origin_studio
cargo add compiler_builtins --features=mem
echo 'fn main() { println!("cargo:rustc-link-arg=-nostartfiles"); }' > build.rs
sed -i '1s/^/#![no_std]\n#![no_main]\norigin_studio::no_problem!();\n\n/' src/main.rs
cargo run --quiet

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's main function, since Origin Studio will 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!