2015.12: added release notes

release-notes.txt

@@ -1,3 +1,230 @@
+RIOT-2015.12 - Release Notes
+============================
+RIOT is a real-time multi-threading operating system that supports a range of
+devices that are typically found in the Internet of Things: 8-bit
+microcontrollers, 16-bit microcontrollers and light-weight 32-bit processors.
+
+RIOT is based on the following design principles: energy-efficiency, real-time
+capabilities, small memory footprint, modularity, and uniform API access,
+independent of the underlying hardware (this API offers partial POSIX
+compliance).
+
+RIOT is developed by an international open source community which is
+independent of specific vendors (e.g. similarly to the Linux community).
+
+About this release:
+===================
+This release is mostly a clean-up and bug-fixing release. Besides that, it introduces SAUL,
+the [S]ensor [A]ctuator [U]ber [L]ayer, which offers a unified API to interact with all
+different types of sensors and actuators on RIOT supported hardware. Furthermore, it re-enables
+the support for ICN by integrating CCN-Lite as a package. A lot of new overall documentation was
+added and existing documentation was improved (http://riot-os.org/api/). In addition,
+a Vagrant (https://www.vagrantup.com/) configuration file was added to the RIOT repository in
+order to create reproducible and portable environments that contain all necessary toolchains.
+
+About 222 pull requests with about 631 commits have been merged since the last release and 48
+additional issues have been solved. 37 people contributed code in 102 days. 980 files have been
+touched with ~59779 insertions and ~12115 deletions.
+
+Notations used below:
+=====================
++ means new feature/item
+* means modified feature/item
+- means removed feature/item
+
+
+New features and changes
+========================
+
+General
+-------
+
+Device support
+--------------
++ SAUL [S]ensor [A]ctuator [U]ber [L]ayer
+
+Core
+----
+* replaced deprecated dINT()/eINT() calls by up-to-date disableIRQ()/enableIRQ()/restoreIRQ()
+  calls throughout the whole core
+
+Network Stack
+-------------
++ TFTP support
++ 6LoWPAN: Next Header Compression
++ leaf mode for RPL nodes
+* RPL: refactoring of instances and dodags (saved 1kB ROM and 0,5kB RAM)
+* FIB: initial source route support
+* change to non-blocking 6LoWPAN fragmentation
+* POSIX sockets: various fixes
+* periodic stats printing for ping6 command
+* convert all vtimer into xtimer calls
+* send router advertisements without PIOs
+
+Packages
+--------
++ CCN-Lite as a ICN network stack
++ RELIC: efficient cryptography library
+* fix TLSF to compile with -pedantic
+
+Supported platforms
+-------------------
+Additional support for the following boards:
++ weio board with  NXP LPC11U34 (ARM Cortex-M0)
++ Silicon Labs Wireless Eval Kit SLWSTK6220A (Wonder Gecko)
++ STM32 Nucleo-F401
+
+Drivers
+-------
++ Arduino-mega2560 GPIO
++ Arduino pin mapping for Mega2560 and Due
+
+Network drivers
+---------------
++ enc28j60 Ethernet chip
++ at86rf2xx: Add support for channel page
+* at86rf2xx: fix LQI reading
+* implement sleep mode for at86rf2xx
+
+Sensors drivers
+---------------
++ AT30TSE75x temperature sensor
++ TCS3772 Color Light-to-Digital converter
+
+System libraries
+----------------
++ partial support for the Arduino API
++ lightweight semaphores
++ fmt: simple string formatting library
++ xtimer: 32-bit version of msg_recv_timeout
+* implicit socket binding for POSIX connect() and sendto()
+* posix_semaphore: make API POSIX compliant
+
+Examples
+--------
++ microcoap/conn example
++ minimal GNRC networking example
+
+Build System
+------------
+* split the Cortex-M0 buildtest group to avoid timeout issues with Travis
+* split the Cortex-M4 buildtest group to avoid timeout issues with Travis
+
+Other
+-----
++ vagrant configuration
++ documentation: various high-level descriptions of crucial features
++ IoT-LAB: create and connect to debug server
+* pyterm: fix problems with German umlauts as input
+
+Fixed Issues from the last release
+==================================
+
+#2724: Add support for serial number passing to CMSIS boards, document it
+    Documentation about how to discover and set the serial number of CMSIS-DAP chips is missing
+#3201: Odd length packet snips cause invalid check sum
+    If an odd length packet snip occurs in a packet and is not the last snip
+    (in the order the packet is supposed to be, not in the list's order)
+    in a packet it will generate a wrong check sum.
+
+Known Issues
+============
+
+network related issues
+----------------------
+#3075: nhdp: unnecessary microsecond precision
+    NHDP works with timer values of microsecond precision which is not required. Changing
+    to lower precision would save some memory.
+#3086: Max. packet length for AT86RF2XX
+    The size of the link-layer header is not dynamically calculated, but instead the maximum
+    size is always assumed.
+#3970: RPL: Advertise DODAG only over the assigned interface
+     gnrc_rpl seems to multicast DIOs over all interfaces, though gnrc_rpl_init expects an
+     interface as parameter and sets the RPL-nodes multicast address only for that interface.
+#4048: potential racey memory leak
+     According to the packet buffer stats, flood-pinging a multicast destination may lead to a
+     memory leak due to a race condition. However, it seems to be a rare case and a
+     completely filled up packet buffer was not observed.
+#4462: IPHC/NHC broken between Linux and a RIOT node with a RIOT-based border router in between.
+
+native related issues
+---------------------
+#495: native not float safe
+    When the FPU is used when an asynchronous context switch occurs, either the
+    stack gets corrupted or a floating point exception occurs.
+#534: native debugging on osx fails
+    Using valgrind or gdb with a nativenet target in OSX leads to "the network"
+    being stuck (gdb) or the whole process being stuck (valgrind).
+#3341 and #3824: nativenet crashes when hammered
+    Flood-pinging a native instance from more than one host (either multiple threads on the
+    host system or multiple other native instances), leads to a SEGFAULT.
+#4608: tests/xtimer_usleep_until: unstable behaviour
+    The test starts to output "too large difference" and fails after a random period of time.
+
+other platform related issues
+-----------------------------
+#4560: make: clang is more pedantic than gcc
+    oonf_api is not building with clang.
+#4583: cpp11: clang doesn't allow `mutex_t` to be used with `constexpr`
+    All cpp11-* tests fail with clang.
+
+other issues
+------------
+#2761: core: define default flags
+    If a thread is created without the corresponding flag  (CREATE_STACKTEST),
+    the ps command will yield wrong numbers for the stack usage
+#2927: core: Automatically select the lowest possible LPM mode
+    Not all available low power modes (LPMs) are implemented for each platform and the
+    concept of how the LPM is chosen needs some reconsideration
+#2967: Makefile.features: location is not relevant for all features
+    Provided features for the build system should be split up into a board and cpu specific
+    part
+#3109: periph/random: random_read should return unsigned int
+    The documentation of this function does not match corresponding implementation.
+#4488: Making the newlib thread-safe
+    When calling puts/printf after thread_create(), the CPU hangs for DMA enabled uart drivers.
+
+Special Thanks
+--------------
+We like to give our special thanks to all the companies that provided us with their hardware
+for porting and testing, namely the people from (in alphabetical order):
+Atmel, Freescale, Limifrog, Phytec, SiLabs, and Zolertia; and also companies that directly
+sponsored development time:
+Cisco Systems, Google, Eistec, Ell-i, Engineering Spirit, FreshTemp LLC, and Phytec.
+
+More information
+================
+http://www.riot-os.org
+
+Mailing lists
+-------------
+* RIOT OS kernel developers list
+ * devel@riot-os.org (http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel)
+* RIOT OS users list
+ * users@riot-os.org (http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/users)
+* RIOT commits
+ * commits@riot-os.org (http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/commits)
+* Github notifications
+ * notifications@riot-os.org  (http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/notifications)
+
+IRC
+-----
+* Join the RIOT IRC channel at: irc.freenode.net, #riot-os
+
+License
+=======
+
+* Most of the code developed by the RIOT community is licensed under the
+  GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
+* Some external sources are published under a separate, LGPL compatible license
+  (e.g. some files developed by SICS).
+
+All code files contain licensing information.
+
+
+
+
+
 RIOT-2015.09 - Release Notes
 ============================
 RIOT is a real-time multi-threading operating system that supports a range of