Discourage use of semihosting and mention viable alternatives

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust

Research direction

Search the book for its semihosting documentation and read the surrounding guidance. Add a prominent warning, a checklist for diagnosing semihosting problems, and explanations of cargo-embed with RTT and serial as alternatives; done means the documentation no longer presents semihosting as the default choice.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Semihosting is a top contender for being the stumble block in embedded so we really should discourage its use with a big fat warning and a checklist what to look out for if a program uses semihosting and doesn't work. At the moment it's described in very peachy terms so people naturally try it, run into problems and then are told on matrix to not use semihosting -- not a great experience.

Instead of semihosting the better approach is to explain cargo-embed and RTT, which is similarly ubiquitous. And as a runner up serial is also a viable and less intrusive option.

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