board
This is the main module import for working with Ratel. To use this module and any of the other modules in this library you need to specify a supported board with the -d:board:<someboard> switch. This can of course be put in a configuration file.
Importing the board in Ratel does a couple different things. First of it defines all the pins, ports, and interfaces that your board supports. While these change depending on what your board actually supports the definitions looks a little something like this:
const this*: Board I2cBus*: I2c Serial*: SerialPort B*: Port C*: Port B0*: Pin B1*: Pin B2*: Pin C0*: Pin C1*: Pin C2*: Pin LED* = B3
All ports and interfaces are numbered, but a default is always set. So if we have more than one I2C bus on a board you would have I2cBus1 and I2cBus2, but also a definition for I2cBus which would be an alias for either of the two. Which one depends on the board. The built-in LED is a similar story.
The specific objects for these should be considered an implementation detail, and on some boards that require runtime state to operate them they might be runtime objects instead of constants. However Ratel tries to make sure to use mostly static compile-time objects and abstractions.
Along with this the board also defines a ratelBoard constant holding the name of the board. This is used internally to verify that the specified board was actually imported correctly, but it can also be used for platform specific implementations.
In addition the board has the required passC and passL flags to build your project for the specified board.