There’s been a long-standing rough spot between regular executables and the binary file wrappers actually uploaded and stored in hardware on embedded systems. Firmion tries to smooth this step with a domain specific language and composition engine for firmware image generation. The language style is simple and declarative, so source code resembles the actual output file format.

The idea of a purpose-built tool for firmware image creation came from the problems encountered at a previous company. I started Firmion as a fun compiler exploration in Rust while cooped up during Covid. A few months ago, I found time again to reenergize the project and turn it into something real.

Firmion is new, but documented, extensible and ready for test drives. I’d very much appreciate real-world feedback on usability, features, documentation and a comparison with whatever generates your firmware images now. If you’re already in the Rust ecosystem, you can “cargo install firmion”.