RIOT-2018.01 - Release Notes

RIOT is a multi-threading operating system which enables soft real-time capabilities and comes with support for a range of devices that are typically found in the Internet of Things: 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers as well as light-weight 32-bit processors.

RIOT is based on the following design principles: energy-efficiency, soft real-time capabilities, small memory footprint, modularity, and uniform API access, independent of the underlying hardware (with 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:

The 2018.01 release includes major progress in RIOTs network communication capabilities, i.e., rewrite of GNRC's neighbour discovery, confirmable messages in (g)CoAP, LoRa, and GoMacH as well as updates on CCN-lite and LWIP. Furthermore, RIOT contributes to IKEA-Hacking by bringing support for the smart home lighting system TRADFRI (note: this will void the warranty). Needless to say that this release also adds and updates support for several platforms, drivers, and of course lots of enhancements to the documentation as well as numerous bug fixes. Last but not least, RIOT now has an official code of conduct (https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)

More than 442 pull requests with about 865 commits have been merged since the last release and about 96 issues have been solved. 54 people contributed with code in 96 days. Approximately 2370 files have been touched with 223970 insertions and 181409 deletions.

Notations used below:

+ means new feature/item
* means modified feature/item
- means removed feature/item

New features and changes

System libraries

+ event: event queue framework like libevent

Networking

+ gcoap: confirmable messages
+ nanocoap: no external package anymore
* GNRC: major rewrite of neighbour discovery
* GNRC: new API for network interface handling

Packages

+ gecko_sdk: library for EFM/EFR/EZR32 MCUs
* libcoap: git patching fixed
+ littlefs: filesystem for constraint devices
- nanocoap: now part of RIOT
* openthread: updated
+ semtech-loramac: LoRa MAC
+ umorse: morse encoder

Boards

+ acd52832
* common: restructured shared code for boards
+ b-l475e-iot01a
+ bluepill
+ ikea-tradfri
- pca10000
- pca10005
- qemu-i386
+ ruuvitag
+ sltb001a
+ teensy31
+ thingy52
- x86

CPU

+ efm32
* kinetis: unified all MCU variants
- x86

Device Drivers

+ socket_zep: emulated IEEE 802.15.4 device over a UDP for native
+ hts221
+ lc709203f
+ lis2dh12
+ rn2xx3
+ soft_spi
+ tja1042

Build System / Tooling

+ flake8: python code checker
* make: set `-Wall -Wextra` as default for all compilers and platforms
- sniffer: moved to applications repository
+ tests: add automated test scripts for many apps

Fixed Issues from the last release (2017.10)

#2143: unittests: tests-core doesn't compile for all platforms #4499: handle of l2src_len in gnrc_ndp_rtr_sol_handle #4822: kw2xrf: packet loss when packets get fragmented #5005: ndp: router advertisement sent with global address #5122: NDP: global unicast address on non-6LBR nodes disappears after a while #5656: Possible Weakness with locking in the GNRC network stack #5790: ND: Lost of Global IPV6 on node after sending lot of UDP frame from BR #5944: msp430: ipv6_hdr unittests fail #6451: Wrong value in SRF08 driver #6502: cpu/stm32l1: RTC broken

Known Issues

Networking related issues

#5230: gnrc ipv6: multicast packets are not dispatched to the upper layers #5858: gnrc: 6lo: potential problem with reassembly of fragments: If one frame gets lost the reassembly state machine might get out of sync #7035: lwIP: hangs due to sema change after a while

Timer related issues

#5103: xtimer: weird behavior of tests/xtimer_drift: xtimer_drift randomly jumps a few seconds on nrf52 #5338: xtimer: xtimer_now() not ISR safe for non-32-bit platforms. #6052: tests: xtimer_drift gets stuck: application freezes after ~30-200 seconds #7114: xtimer: add's items to the wrong list if the timer overflows between _xtimer_now() and irq_disable()

native related issues

#495: native not float safe: When FPU is used and an asynchronous context switch occurs, either the stack gets corrupted or a floating point exception occurs. #6442: cpu/native: timer interrupt does not yield thread

other platform related issues

#1891: newlib-nano: Printf formatting does not work properly for some numeric types: PRI[uxdi]64, PRI[uxdi]8 and float are not parsed in newlib-nano #4866: not all GPIO driver implementations are thread safe: Due to non-atomic operations in the drivers some pin configurations might get lost. #5848: Arduino: Race condition in sys/arduino/Makefile.include #6018: nRF52 gnrc 6lowpan ble memory leak #6261: SAMD21: TC3 & TC4 issue when using TCC2 #6379: nrf52dk/nordic_soft_device: not working anymore #6437: periph/spi: Leftovers from SPI rework #6526: atmega based boards freeze when main thread is over #6836: Issuing a reboot on ATmega328p makes the board loop-reboot #7753: pic32-wifire: race-condition when linking in concurrent build

other issues

#1263: TLSF implementation contains (a) read-before-write error(s). #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. #5776: make: Predefining CFLAGS are parsed weirdly #5863: OSX + SAMR21-xpro: shell cannot handle inputs of length >64 chars #5962: Makefile: UNDEF variable is not working as documented

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all companies (vendors) that provided us with (their) hardware for porting and testing RIOT-OS. Further thanks go to companies and institutions that directly sponsored development time. And finally, big thanks to all of you contributing in so many different ways to make RIOT worthwhile!

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

• 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 and packages are published under a separate license.

All code files contain licensing information.