Intro

Ferris holding his Dreamcast controller

Rust is a popular modern programming language focusing on performance, memory safety, and program correctness. As a "blazingly fast" low-level language, it is viable for running on a Dreamcast console. Doing so presents a bit of a challenge, however, as the official Rust compiler is based on the LLVM toolchain infrastructure, which does not support the Dreamcast CPU's SuperH architecture. Dreamcast programming is instead typically done with GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. There are currently two viable solutions to this challenge:

  • rustc_codegen_gcc, the current preferred method: An experimental codegen backend for the official Rust rustc compiler which interfaces with GCC's libgccjit API
  • gccrs: an experimental Rust frontend for GCC

Neither solution is complete at this time, but rustc_codegen_gcc is much further along and is quite usable with some patience with its current limitations. On the other hand, gccrs can compile for Dreamcast, but is in an earlier state. In this book, we will focus on using rustc_codegen_gcc. For more information on using gccrs, see the gccrs page page.