Instead of having a send buffer as member `esp_wifi` netdev, a local variable is used now as send buffer. This avoids the need for a locking mechanism and reduces the risk of deadlocks.
Receive call back function `_esp_wifi_rx_cb` is called from WiFi hardware driver with a pointer to a frame buffer that is allocated in the WiFi hardware driver. This frame buffer was freed immediately after copying its content to a single local receive buffer of the `esp_wifi` netdev. The local receive buffer remained occupied until the protocol stack had processed it. Further incoming packets were dropped. However, very often a number of subsequent WiFi frames are received at the same time before the first one is processed completely. Having the single local receive buffer to hold only one received frame, led to a number of lost packets, even at low network load. Therefore, a ringbuffer of rx_buf elements was introduced which doesn't store the frames directly but only references to the frame buffers allocated in WiFi hardware driver. Since there is enough memory to hold several frames, the frames buffers allocated in WiFi hardware driver aren't freed immediatly any longer but are kept until the frame is processed by the protocol stack. This results in a much less loss rate of packets.
Events of different type can be pending at the same time. Therefore it is not possible to use ascending identifiers for the presence of a pending event. Rather, each event type has to be represented by one bit. Thes bits ORed identify all types of pending events. In the esp_wifi_isr function all pending events are then handled in one call. Otherwise, some events might be lost.
UART FIFO must contain only 1 byte when newlib's `printf` function is used. Otherwise, outputs that are still not sent over UART are lost when `printf` is called asynchronousely.
To avoid unresolved symbols for unused functions during linking, compiler option `-ffunction-sections` is used now. Linker option `--warn-unresolved-symbols` is removed to get errors if required symbols cannot be resolved.
The modules `newlib, `newlib_syscalls_default` and `stdio_uart` are now used by default for output to the UART interface. This also reduces the dependency rules.
The overridden stdio functions `puts`, `putchar` and `printf` were removed. Instead, the corresponding newlib functions are always used. Using the newlib functions fixes output conflicts when using `f *` functions like `fprintf`,` fputs`, ... with `stdout` as the file parameter.
Module `newlib` is now used by default. Therefore, the separation of initialization of ctors and the newlibc is not needed any longer. Instead of calling `do_global_ctors` and `_init` separately, `__libc_init_array` is called. Explicit function `do_global_ctors` is removed.
Initializing the stdio file descriptors in global reent structure with newlib fake stdio file descriptors led to the problem that newlib stdio functions printf and puts were not working since they can't operate on these fake stdio file descriptors. Therefore, this initialization was removed. Now, the real stdio file descriptors as created automatically by newlib are used. Specific functions `printf`, `puts`, `getchar`and `putchar` are not required any longer and are removed now.
Modules newlib and newlib_syscalls_default are now used by default. Conditional compilations for MODULE_NEWLIB_SYSCALLS_DEFAULT as well as alternative code are removed completely.
printf and puts used ets_printf before. Unfortunately, ets_printf adds an additional \r for each \n which is not consistent with other RIOT platforms. As a result some automatic tests failed. Therefore, both functions write now character-wise directly to the UART interface.
Memory management function like `malloc`, `calloc`, `realloc` and `free` must not be preempted when they operate on allocator structures. To avoid such a preemption, wrappers around these functions are used which simply disable all interrupts for the time of their execution.
Using a mutex for critical section handling with portENTER_CRITICAL and portEXIT_CRITICAL does not work for RIOT, as this function can also be called in the interrupt context. Therefore, the given mutex is not used. Instead, the basic default FreeRTOS mechanism for critical sections is used by simply disabling interrupts. Since context switches for the ESP32 are also based on interrupts, there is no possibility that another thread will enter the critical section once the interrupts are disabled.