oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/hubris

Developer-visible task state readout

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affects-humility developer-experience Triaged H2'26
Dominant language
Rust
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Forks
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Avg merge
1d 12h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

It would be nice to have a way for tasks to append some sort information to the output of humility tasks. For instance, to indicate that the network link managed by a task is up. This could remove a lot of squinting at ringbuffers/readvar.

My sketch of a design:

  • Extend the debugger-to-task DBI with a new symbol, something like HUMILITY_TASK_STATUS.
  • Tasks can declare this symbol at top level (static no_mangle).
  • Any value stored in such a global variable will be read out by Humility and printed using the standard DWARF pretty-printing mechanism.

So, to continue the network stack example, one could do this:

struct NetStatus {
    link: LinkState,
    mac: [u8; 6],
}

enum LinkState { Up, Down, Confused }

#[no_mangle]
static HUMILITY_TASK_STATUS: StaticCell<NetStatus> = StaticCell::new(NetStatus {
    link: LinkState::Down,
    mac: [0xFF; 6],
});

...and then subsequently update it:

HUMILITY_TASK_STATUS.borrow_mut().mac = generated_mac;

and then over in Humility we'd extend the task status output, maybe only on request, to be something like

11 net                  339   2 wait: send to gimlet_seq/gen19   NetStatus { link: Up, mac: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] }

@mkeeter and I were talking about this recently, and I believe I've previously run it by @bcantrill.

Contributor guide

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First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the debugger-to-task DBI and the existing Humility task status output. Determine how a HUMILITY_TASK_STATUS symbol could be declared by Rust tasks and read through DWARF pretty-printing. Done means task status output can include the declared value, such as the NetStatus example, without requiring ringbuffers or readvar.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
embedded-iot
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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