NuttX by design and by rule uses its own in-tree hardware implementation for archs, platforms, mcus, boards, drivers, etc, so it is a self-contained and self-sufficient environment. There are two exceptions to this rule Espressif and RaspberryPi, unfortunately.
We are aware of the issue and its pros and cons. There is not much we can do about ESP because of the design of their tools. Yes it is a moving target.. whoever worked with standalone esp-idf knows that. Pros: + There is a dedicated team in Espressif for NuttX development that maintains the esp-sdk components. + We have always up to date implementations and features. + Easy migration between different ESP chips inside NuttX ecosystem. + We have new chips support out-of-the-box for free. Cons: - All ESP implementation in NuttX depends completely on external source that may disappear one day. - If we freeze esp-sdk then we loose updates, features, and vendor maintenance. - We won't be able to cope with amount of changes in esp-sdk on our own. This situation is not perfect from NuttX point of view but optimal from Espressif point of view, and provides working up-to-date environment for NuttX ESP32* users. We have really good support from Espressif, unlike any other vendor. Any big company has its goals and rules that we have no choice to follow, and there are other chips that require some binary blobs too. I am not sure if we can do anything about it.. unless you want to start your own fully open-source esp-sdk? It would be perfect to have fully open-source radio stacks but its astronomical amount of work. The simplest solution to a stalled PR is just asking our community to keep pushing until its processed :-) -- CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info On Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 12:21 AM Felipe Moura Oliveira <[email protected]> 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>
