Are We RTOS Yet?

The state of Real Time Operating Systems in Rust.

Status

We are not RTOS, yet.

There are only a handful of RTOSs written in rust, and only one of them compiles on stable.

The future is bright for RTOSs in rust, the language has many features that benefit RTOS development:

Procedural macros allow RTIC to guarantee deadlock-free execution at compile time.
no_std executors allow embassy and drone to provide cooperative scheduling with await syntax
const functions allow R3 to configure the RTOS as much as possible at compile time

Many of these are not true RTOSs:

Some are not real-time
Some are more accurately described as execution frameworks instead of operating systems

Name	Native Rust	Compiles on stable	License	Language(s)
aerugo	✅	❌	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
bern	✅	❌	MIT	en
drone	✅	❌	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
embassy	✅	✅	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
freertos	❌	Partial	MIT	en
hubris	✅	❌	MPL-2.0	en
lilos	✅	✅	MPL-2.0	en
MnemOS	✅	✅	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
R3	✅	❌	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
RIOT-OS	❌	✅	LGPL-2.1	en
rt	❌	✅	Apache-2.0	en
RTIC	✅	✅	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en, ru
Tock	✅	Partial	MIT OR Apache-2.0	en
tornado	✅	❌	Apache-2.0 OR MulanPSL-2.0	zh
Wasefire	✅	❌	Apache-2.0	en
zephyr	❌	✅	Apache-2.0	en