Previously, the machine.UART0 object had two meanings:
- it was the first UART on the chip
- it was the default output for println
These two meanings conflict, and resulted in workarounds like:
- Defining UART0 to refer to the USB-CDC interface (atsamd21,
atsamd51, nrf52840), even though that clearly isn't an UART.
- Defining NRF_UART0 to avoid a conflict with UART0 (which was
redefined as a USB-CDC interface).
- Defining aliases like UART0 = UART1, which refer to the same
hardware peripheral (stm32).
This commit changes this to use a new machine.Serial object for the
default serial port. It might refer to the first or second UART
depending on the board, or even to the USB-CDC interface. Also, UART0
now really refers to the first UART on the chip, no longer to a USB-CDC
interface.
The changes in the runtime package are all just search+replace. The
changes in the machine package are a mixture of search+replace and
manual modifications.
This commit does not affect binary size, in fact it doesn't affect the
resulting binary at all.
Make the USBCDC use a pointer receiver everywhere. This makes it easier
to pass around the object in the future.
This commit sometimes changes code size, but not significantly (a few
bytes) and usually in a positive way.
My eventual goal is the following:
- Declare `machine.USB` (or similar, name TBD) as a pointer receiver
for the USB-CDC interface.
- Let `machine.UART0` always point to an UART, never actually to a
USBCDC object.
- Define `machine.Serial`, which is either a real UART or an USB-CDC,
depending on the board.
This way, if you want a real UART you can use machine.UARTx and if you
just want to print to the default serial port, you can use
machine.Serial.
This change does have an effect on code size and memory consumption.
There is often a small reduction (-8 bytes) in RAM consumption and an
increase in flash consumption.