Ferrous Systems has announced the transformation of their proprietary distribution, ferRocene, into an open project. The code for Ferrocene is now published under the licenses of Apache 2.0 and MIT. Ferrocene provides tools for developing RUST applications for critical systems that require increased reliability, such as safety-critical systems that can potentially harm people’s lives, the environment, or equipment.
Ferrocene is based on rustc, the standard RUST project compiler, which ensures compliance with the software environment requirements for automobile and industrial systems (ISO 26262 and IEC 61508). The reliability of Ferrocene is verified through the use of expanded methods of checking, testing, and managing quality. Over the past two years, the product has undergone refinements and corrections based on feedback from the company Ferrous Systems.
One of the development goals is to maintain Ferrocene as close to the Upstream project as possible. For this reason, it is proposed to transfer it directly to the main repository of rust-lang/rust, rather than the ferocene repository. Ferrous Systems will focus on providing verified binary assemblies, integrating with equipment manufacturers’ SDKs, conducting quality checks and tests on industrial platforms, and implementing support for various standards. They also plan to promote the main composition of RUSTC capabilities and adapt to changes in demand in critical systems and industrial devices.
The release of Ferrocene 23.06.0 is planned in the near future. This release will be the first to meet the requirements of ISO 26262 (Asil D) and IEC 61508 (SIL 4). However, it will not be completely open, as it includes proprietary information from a previous partner. After the release of Ferrocene 23.06.0, work will begin on version 23.06.1, which aims to remove proprietary inclusions and be published next month as an open product. All future releases will also be published as Open Source. Additionally, there are plans to open the Criticalup installer code and synchronize its development with the Rustup project.