xous-core/services/shellchat

Shell Chat

shellchat is a baseline demo application for Xous. It uses a chat-client style interface (stacking bubbles of text, with user input right-aligned and shell feedback left-aligned) to facilitate interactions with the hardware. It implements the basic envisioned structure of a Xous application, namely:

• Text input comes via the ime-frontend
• Graphical output is rendered via the gam

Other facilities for handling system-level messages, such as menu configurations and network events, have yet to be implemented. However, they will likely end up with a demo in this application first.

To make your own command, copy the echo.rs template or snag the one below, and put it in the services/shellchat/src/cmds/ directory:

use crate::{ShellCmdApi, CommonEnv};
use xous_ipc::String;

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct Echo {
}

impl<'a> ShellCmdApi<'a> for Echo {
    cmd_api!(echo); // inserts boilerplate for command API

    fn process(&mut self, args: String::<1024>, _env: &mut CommonEnv) -> Result<Option<String::<1024>>, xous::Error> {
        Ok(Some(rest))
    }
}

The "verb" is the name of your command, and it is the argument to the cmd_api!() macro.

process() is your "main" function, and args is a string which contains the rest of the line that was typed into the chat, minus the verb used to identify your command (the arguments, as they may be, but not tokenized or parsed in any way). env contains some items in a common environment, for example, connections to the GAM, LLIO server or other resources required by your implementation.

Once you've added your command to the directory, go to the cmds.rs file, and follow the four-step instructions embedded within the file, starting around line 40.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Xous is currently nostd
• When you're done adding your command, you should be able to do a cargo xtask run and it will fire up an emulated environment, like the one above
• Type...very...slowly...when using the emulated environment.