Generic MCU Environment Setup

We aim to support many different MCUs and their respective software development environments. For those environments where we can’t provide an out-of-the-box integration, we provide the following generic instructions on what’s needed to compile and use Slint.

Prerequisites

• Install Rust by following the Rust Getting Started Guide ↗. If you already have Rust installed, make sure that it’s at least version 1.95 or newer. You can check which version you have installed by running rustc --version. Once this is done, you should have the rustc compiler and the cargo build system installed in your path.

• A C++ cross-compiler compiler that supports C++20.

• cmake ↗ (3.21 or newer)

  • Slint comes with a CMake integration that automates the compilation step of the .slint markup language files and offers a CMake target for convenient linkage.

  • Note: We recommend using the Ninja generator of CMake for the most efficient build and .slint dependency tracking. Install Ninja ↗ and select the CMake Ninja backend by passing -GNinja or set the CMAKE_GENERATOR environment variable to Ninja.

  • A build environment for cross-compilation with CMake ↗, such as a toolchain file.

Compiling Slint

To target an MCU environment, all of the following additional CMake configuration options must be set when compiling Slint:

Option	Description
-DSLINT_FEATURE_FREESTANDING=ON	Enables building for environments without a standard library.
-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF	Disables shared library support and instead builds Slint statically.
-DSLINT_FEATURE_RENDERER_SOFTWARE=ON	Enable support for the software renderer.
-DDEFAULT_SLINT_EMBED_RESOURCES=embed-for-software-renderer	Default to pre-compiling images and fonts.

For example, if you’re targeting an MCU with a ARM Cortex-M processor, the complete command line for CMake could look like this:

cmake -DRust_CARGO_TARGET=thumbv7em-none-eabihf -DSLINT_FEATURE_FREESTANDING=ON
      -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF -DSLINT_FEATURE_RENDERER_SOFTWARE=ON
      -DDEFAULT_SLINT_EMBED_RESOURCES=embed-for-software-renderer
      ..

bash

Next Steps

• Check out the Getting Started instructions for a generic “Hello World” with C++.
• Study the C++ API Reference, in particular the slint::platform namespace for writing a Slint platform integration to handle touch input and render pixel, which you need to forward to your MCU’s display driver.
• For more details about the Slint language, check out the Slint Language Documentation.
• Learn about the Type Mappings between Slint and C++.