RIOT-2016.10 - 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) and is
licensed with a non-viral copyleft license (LGPLv2.1), which allows indirect
business models around the free open-source software platform provided by
RIOT.
About this release:
===================
This release provides a lot of new features as well as it fixes several major
bugs. Among these new features are the new simplified network socket API
called sock, the GNRC specific CoAP implementation gcoap and several new
packages: TinyDTLS, the Aversive++ microcontroller library for robotics, the
u8g2 graphic library, and nanocoap.
Using the new sock API an implementation of the Simple Time Network Protocol
(SNTP) was also introduced, allowing for time synchronization between nodes.
New platforms include the Arduino Uno, the Arduino Duemilanove, the Arduino
Zero, SODAQ Autonomo, and the Zolertia remote (rev. B).
The most significant bug fix was done in native which led to a significantly
more robust handling of ISRs and now allows for at least 1,000 native
instances running stably on one machine.
About 263 pull requests with about 398 commits have been merged since the last
release and about 42 issues have been solved. 37 people contributed with code
in 100 days. 1006 files have been touched with 166500 insertions and 26926
deletions.
Notations used below:
=====================
+ means new feature/item
* means modified feature/item
- means removed feature/item
New features and changes
========================
General
-------
* Verbose behavior for assert() macro
Core
----
+ MPU support for Cortex-M
API changes
-----------
+ Socket-like sock API (replacing conn)
* netdev2: Add Testmodes and CCA modes
* IEEE 802.15.4: clean-up Intra-PAN behavior
* IEEE 802.15.4: centralize default values
* gnrc_pktbuf: allow for 0-sized snips
+ gnrc_netapi: mbox and arbitrary callback support
System libraries
----------------
No new features or changes
Networking
----------
+ Provide sock-port for GNRC
+ gcoap: a GNRC-based CoAP implementation
+ Simple Network Time Protocol (RFC 5905, section 14)
+ Priority Queue for packet snips
+ IPv4 header definitions
Packages
--------
+ nanocoap: CoAP header parser/builder
+ TinyDTLS: DTLS library
+ tiny-asn1: asn.1/der decoder
+ Aversive++ microcontroller programming library
+ u8g2 graphic library
Platforms
---------
+ Support for stm32f2xx MCU family
+ Low power modes for samd21 CPUs
+ More Arduino-based platforms:
+ Arduino Uno
+ Arduino Duemilanove
+ Arduino Zero
+ More boards of ST's Nucleo platforms:
+ ST Nucleo F030 board support
+ ST Nucleo F070 board support
+ ST Nucleo F446 board support
+ SODAQ Automono
+ Zolertia remote rev. B
Drivers
-------
+ W5100 Ethernet device
+ Atmel IO1 Xplained extension
+ LPD8808 LED strips
* at86rf2xx: provide capability to access the RND_VALUE random value register
Build System
------------
+ static-tests build target for easy local execution of CI's static tests
Other
-----
+ Provide Arduino API to Nucleo boards
+ Packer configuration file to build vagrant boxes
+ CC2650STK Debugger Support
+ ethos: add Ethos over TCP support
Fixed Issues from the last release
==================================
#534: native debugging on osx fails
#2071: native: *long* overdue fixes
#3341: netdev2_tap crashes when hammered
#5007: gnrc icmpv6: Ping reply goes out the wrong interface
#5432: native: valgrind fails
Known Issues
============
Networking 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.
#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.
#4388: POSIX sockets: open socket is bound to a specific thread: This was an
inherit problem of the conn API under GNRC. Since the POSIX sockets are
still based on conn for this release, this issue persists
#4527: gnrc_ipv6: Multicast is not forwarded if routing node listens to the
address (might still be fixable for release, see #5729, #5230: gnrc
ipv6: multicast packets are not dispatched to the upper layers)
#5016: gnrc_rpl: Rejoining RPL instance as root after reboot messes up routing
#5055: cpuid: multiple radios will get same EUI-64 Nodes with multiple
interfaces might get the same EUI-64 for them since they are generated
from the same CPU ID.
#5656: Possible Weakness with locking in the GNRC network stack: For some
operations mutexes to the network interfaces need to get unlocked in
the current implementation to not get deadlocked. Recursive mutexes as
provided in #5731 might help to solve this problem.
#5748: gnrc: nodes crashing with too small packet buffer: A packet buffer of
size ~512 B might lead to crashes. The issue describes this for several
hundret nodes, but agressive flooding with just two nodes was also
shown to lead to this problem.
#5858: gnrc: 6lo: potential problem with reassembly of fragments: If one frame
gets lost the reassembly state machine might get out of sync
### NDP is not working properly
#4499: handle of l2src_len in gnrc_ndp_rtr_sol_handle: Reception of a router
solicitation might lead to invalid zero-length link-layer addresses in
neighbor cache.
#5005: ndp: router advertisement sent with global address: Under some
circumstances a router might send RAs with GUAs. While they are ignored
on receive (as RFC 4861 specifies), RAs should have link-local
addresses and not even be send out this way.
#5122: NDP: global unicast address on non-6LBR nodes disappears after a while:
Several issues (also see #5760) lead to a global unicast address
effectively being banned from the network (disappears from neighbor
cache, is not added again)
#5467: ipv6 address vanishes when ARO (wrongly) indicates DUP caused by
outdated ncache at router
#5539: Border Router: packet not forwarded from ethos to interface 6
#5790: ND: Lost of Global IPV6 on node after sending lot of UDP frame from BR
Timer related issues
--------------------
#4841: xtimer: timer already in the list: Under some conditions an xtimer can
end up twice in the internal list of the xtimer module
#4902: xtimer: xtimer_set: xtimer_set does not handle integer overflows well
#5338: xtimer: xtimer_now() not ISR safe for non-32-bit platforms.
#5928: xtimer: usage in board_init() crashes: some boards use the xtimer in
there board_init() function. The xtimer is however first initialized in
the auto_init module which is executed after board_init()
#6052: tests: xtimer_drift gets stuck: xtimer_drift application freezes after
~30-200 seconds
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.
#2175: ubjson: valgind registers "Invalid write of size 4" in unittests
#4590: pkg: building relic with clang fails.
#5796: native: tlsf: early malloc will lead to a crash: TLSF needs pools to be
initialized (which is currently expected to be done in an application).
If a malloc is needed before an application's main started (e.g. driver
initialization) the node can crash, since no pool is allocated yet.
other platform related issues
-----------------------------
#1891: newlib-nano: Printf formatting does not work properly for some numberic
types: PRI[uxdi]64, PRI[uxdi]8 and float are not parsed in newlib-nano
#2006: cpu/nrf51822: timer callback may be fired too early
#2143: unittests: tests-core doesn't compile for all platforms: GCC build-ins
were used in the unittests which are not available with msp430-gcc
#2300: qemu unittest fails because of a page fault
#4512: pkg: tests: RELIC unittests fail on iotlab-m3
#4522: avsextrem: linker sometimes doesn't find `bl_init_clks()`
#4560: make: clang is more pedantic than gcc oonf_api is not building with
clang. (Partly solved by #4593)
#4694: drivers/lm75a: does not build
#4737: cortex-m: Hard fault after a thread exits (under some circumstances)
#4822: kw2xrf: packet loss when packets get fragmented
#4876: at86rf2xx: Simultaneous use of different transceiver types is not
supported
#4954: chronos: compiling with -O0 breaks
#4866: not all GPIO driver implementations are thread safe: Due to non-atomic
operations in the drivers some pin configurations might get lost.
#5009: RIOT is saw-toothing in energy consumption (even when idling)
#5103: xtimer: weird behavior of tests/xtimer_drift: xtimer_drift randomly
jumps a few seconds on nrf52
#5361: cpu/cc26x0: timer broken
#5405: Eratic timings on iotlab-m3 with compression context activated
#5460: cpu/samd21: i2c timing with compiler optimization
#5486: at86rf2xx: lost interrupts
#5489: cpu/lpc11u34: ADC broken
#5603: atmega boards second UART issue
#5678: at86rf2xx: failed assertion in _isr
#5719: cc2538: rf driver doesn't handle large packets
#5799: kw2x: 15.4 duplicate transmits
#5944: msp430: ipv6_hdr unittests fail
#5848: arduino: Race condition in sys/arduino/Makefile.include
#5954: nRF52 uart_write get stuck
#6018: nRF52 gnrc 6lowpan ble memory leak
other issues
------------
#1263: TLSF implementation contains (a) read-before-write error(s).
#3256: make: Setting constants on compile time doesn't really set them
everywhere
#3366: periph/i2c: handle NACK
#4488: Making the newlib thread-safe: When calling puts/printf after
thread_create(), the CPU hangs for DMA enabled uart drivers.
#4866: periph: GPIO drivers are not thread safe
#5128: make: buildtest breaks when exporting FEATURES_PROVIDED var
#5207: make: buildest fails with board dependent application Makefiles
#5390: pkg: OpenWSN does not compile: This package still uses deprecated
modules and was not tested for a long time.
#5520: tests/periph_uart not working
#5561: C++11 extensions in header files
#5776: make: Predefining CFLAGS are parsed weirdly
#5863: OSX + SAMR21-xpro: shell cannot handle command inputs larger than 64
chars
#5962: Makefile: UNDEF variable is not working as documented
#6022: pkg: build order issue
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
alphabeticalorder): Atmel, Freescale, Imagination Technologies, Limifrog,
Nordic, OpenMote, Phytec, SiLabs, UDOO,and Zolertia; and also companies that
directly sponsored development time: Cisco Systems, Eistec, Ell-i, Enigeering
Spirit, Nordic, FreshTemp LLC, OTAkeys 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.
