This seems like a reasonable approach. Our Espressif contributors are really excellent and submit lots of high quality patches, so they are definitely an asset. But I do agree about moving to our own governed HAL over time. I have had this open issue with the Espressif HAL for 3 months now: https://github.com/apache/nuttx/issues/18805
It is low priority and not very impactful, but it is annoying and I would like to fix it. Hard to do that if it isn't a high priority on the Espressif timeline. I think being able to patch things up ourselves would be a large benefit, and hopefully it doesn't dissuade our excellent Espressif contributors from continuing to spend their valuable time maintaining NuttX's support for ESP32! Matteo On Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 8:22 AM Felipe Moura Oliveira <[email protected]> wrote: > Good idea Alan! It definitely will help us. > > > > *--Felipe Moura de Oliveira* > Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipe-oliveira-75a651a0> > > On Wed, 5 Aug 2026 at 09:10 Alan C. Assis <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Even although I had worked at Espressif and I am a big fan of their > > microcontrollers I completely understand the frustrations and issues > caused > > by this situation. > > > > Suggestion: since we cannot add this external HAL to Apache, we could put > > it initially in GitHub.com/nuttx and slowly fixing the mainline to avoid > > depending on this HAL. Hopefully most of the constructions come from > three > > Espressif contributors and all these three contributors have committer's > > write, so they could contribute directly to this HAL. > > > > I think this way we can get back the independente of NuttX from its tied > to > > the vendor over the time. > > > > On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, Michal Lenc <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > unfortunately Espressif HAL has the same issue as most of the company's > > > (not just Espressif) driven open source projects. It's open source, but > > you > > > can't really influence its direction because it's completely under > > > company's governance and there is no community behind it. I think it > was > > a > > > mistake to let 3rd party HALs into our source code instead of providing > > the > > > support ourself - yes, the time investment would be huge and our > platform > > > support has its own issues as well, but we sort of opened Pandora's box > > > with it. > > > > > > I agree our long term priority should be to get independent from all > 3rd > > > party repositories and projects at kernel level. It's fine for the > > > applications, but we should have full control of drivers and supported > > > platforms. > > > > > > I would therefore like to ask whether it would be possible to maintain > a > > >> fork of esp-hal-3rdparty under the Apache/NuttX umbrella, with > > appropriate > > >> NuttX committers having write access. > > >> > > > > > > espressif/esp-hal-3rdparty is under Apache license so I think it should > > be > > > possible to fork the repository and maintain it ourself under Apache. > Not > > > sure if there are any restrictions on bringing forks to Apache space > > > though. But this would be a good middle ground between having no > control > > > and the need to write the entire platform support from the scratch. > > > > > > Michal > > > > > > On 8/5/26 02:20, Felipe Moura Oliveira wrote: > > > > > >> Hi all, > > >> > > >> I would like to raise a concern about NuttX’s dependency on > Espressif’s > > >> esp-hal-3rdparty <https://github.com/espressif/esp-hal-3rdparty> > > >> repository > > >> and discuss whether there is a way to give the NuttX community more > > >> control > > >> over the changes required for its development. > > >> > > >> The repository is publicly available, but it is maintained and > > controlled > > >> by a single private company. As a result, external contributions are > > >> handled according to that company’s internal priorities and > > availability, > > >> which can make it difficult for the NuttX community to address issues > > that > > >> block our own development. > > >> > > >> As a concrete example, I opened espressif/esp-hal-3rdparty#13 > > >> <https://github.com/espressif/esp-hal-3rdparty/pull/13>, it has been > > open > > >> for 28 days. It is a small change consisting of one commit and 15 > added > > >> lines across two header files—six lines in one file and nine in the > > other. > > >> The PR has been acknowledged, but it has not received a technical > > review, > > >> and there is no expected completion date. > > >> > > >> I understand that the Espressif maintainers have other priorities, and > > >> this > > >> is not intended as criticism of the individuals involved. However, I > > >> believe it illustrates a governance problem for NuttX: changes > required > > to > > >> support NuttX on specific hardware may depend on a repository whose > > review > > >> process and priorities are outside the control of our community. > > >> > > >> My experience while porting Dropbear <https://github.com/mkj/dropbear > > > > >> was > > >> quite different. We encountered some problems during the port, but its > > >> maintainer actively helped by reviewing the code, suggesting changes, > > and > > >> quickly accepting the corresponding upstream pull requests. > > >> > > >> I would therefore like to ask whether it would be possible to > maintain a > > >> fork of esp-hal-3rdparty under the Apache/NuttX umbrella, with > > appropriate > > >> NuttX committers having write access. Such a fork could continue > > tracking > > >> Espressif’s upstream repository, and generally useful changes could > > still > > >> be submitted upstream whenever possible. > > >> > > >> If maintaining a repository under Apache is not feasible or > > >> appropriate, another > > >> suggestion I have is to start building our own HAL and via kconfig > > select > > >> between the internal driver or the 3rd-party. If you have other > > >> suggestions, please let's talk about them. > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> *--Felipe Moura de Oliveira* > > >> Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipe-oliveira-75a651a0> > > >> > > >> > > > > > >
