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RELEASE 2017.10

RIOT-2017.10 - 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 microcontrollers, 16-bit
microcontrollers and 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:
===================
Most notable, this release is bringing RIOT a step closer to supporting
over-the-air-updates by containing initial support for MCUBoot.
Furthermore, it adds support for some new platforms (e.g. arduino-mkzero,
nucleos, and frdm-k22f), drivers (e.g. my9221, apa102, ds1307), and of course
a large number of bug fixes (e.g. `make buildtest` now working properly,
various fixes to `xtimer`).

About 390 pull requests with about 500 commits have been merged since the last
release and about 60 issues have been solved. 39 people contributed with code
in 113 days. 1825 files have been touched with 223454 insertions and 66146 deletions.

Notations used below:
=====================
+ means new feature/item
* means modified feature/item
- means removed feature/item

New features and changes
========================

Bootloader
-----------
+ MCUBoot: A secure bootloader for ARM MCUs is now supported. This initial support
includes only the nrf52dk board. For more information about it refer to the mcuboot github
page at https://github.com/runtimeco/mcuboot/blob/master/README-RIOT.rst

System libraries
----------------
+ bcd: binary coded decimal en/decoder

Networking
----------
+ gcoap: Add URI-query strings for requests + various fixes

Packages
--------
* lwip: Updated to v2.0.3

Boards
------
+ NXP frdm-k22f
+ STM nucleo144-f722
+ Arduino arduino-mkzero
+ ti CC2650 LaunchPad
- weio

CPU
---
+ NXP k22f
+ cc2538: ADC
+ stm32l4: RTC
+ samr21e18a
+ msp430: added flashpage driver
- lpc11u34
* stm32: unified stmclk implementations, reworked RTC
* sam0: heavy unification and refactoring, updated vendor headers
+ sam_common: started unification of sam0 and sam3
* cortexm: interrupt vector cleanup

Device Drivers
--------------
+ my9221 - LED controller + Seeed Studio Grove LED bar
+ apa102 - RGB LED
+ ds1307: RTC
+ SAUL support: lps331ap
* SAUL gpio: allow configuration of initial state and low-active signals
* sdcard_spi: added mtd interface
* PM: fixed selection of default implementations for `pm_off` and `pm_set_lowest`

Build System / Tooling
------------
+ make: added pkt-prepare target
* gcc: enabled `-fdiagnostics-color` per default for `arm` and `native` targets
* edbg: use as default flash tool for sam0-based boards
+ added LOSTANDFOUND.md for listing removed features

Fixed Issues from the last 3 releases (known issues missing in 2017.04 and 2017.07)
===================================================================================
\#2006: cpu/nrf51822: timer callback may be fired too early
\#4841: xtimer: timer already in the list:
\#4590: pkg: building relic with clang fails.
\#4694: drivers/lm75a: does not build
\#4902: xtimer: xtimer_set: xtimer_set does not handle integer overflows well
\#5128: make: buildtest breaks when exporting FEATURES_PROVIDED var
\#5207: make: buildest fails with board dependent application Makefiles
\#5361: cpu/cc26x0: timer broken
\#5460: cpu/samd21: i2c timing with compiler optimization
\#5489: cpu/lpc11u34: ADC broken
\#5799: kw2x: 15.4 duplicate transmits
\#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()
\#6022: pkg: build order issue
\#6331: RTC alarm triggered with 1s delay
\#6419: cpu/cc2538: timer broken
\#6427: xtimer: infinite loop with xtimer_mutex_lock_timeout
\#6501: boards/nucleo: Pin usage collision (SPI clk vs. LED0)
\#6542: boards/nucle-f0xx: misconfigured timer configuration
\#6904: cpu/saml21: cannot use several EXTI

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: gnrc: potential racey memory leak
\#5016: gnrc_rpl: Rejoining RPL instance as root after reboot messes up routing
\#5230: gnrc ipv6: multicast packets are not dispatched to the upper layers
\#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
\#6123: gnrc: crash with (excessive) traffic
\#6519: driver/mrf24j40: broken on stm32f4discovery
\#7035: lwIP: hangs due to sema change after a while
\#7727: pkg: libcoap is partially broken and outdated

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
--------------------
\#5338: xtimer: xtimer_now() not ISR safe for non-32-bit platforms.
\#6052: tests: xtimer_drift gets stuck: xtimer_drift application freezes after ~30-200 seconds
\#6502: cpu/stm32l1: RTC broken
\#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 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
\#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.
\#6145: native: system reboots on SIGTRAP
\#6442: cpu/native: timer interrupt does not yield thread
\#7206: native: race-condition in IPC

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
\#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
\#4560: make: clang is more pedantic than gcc oonf_api is not building with clang (partly fixed by #4593)
\#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
\#5405: Eratic timings on iotlab-m3 with compression context activated
\#5486: at86rf2xx: lost interrupts
\#5678: at86rf2xx: failed assertion in _isr
\#5944: msp430: ipv6_hdr unittests fail
\#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
\#7347: xtimer_usleep stuck for small values on nucleo-l1
\#7753: pic32-wifire: race-condition when linking in concurrent build
\#7846: stm32f1: I2C read functions return bogus values with unconnected devices

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
\#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
\#6451: Wrong value in SRF08 driver
\#7800: CBOR is broken

Special Thanks
==============
We would 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, Nordic, OpenMote, Phytec, SiLabs, UDOO,
and Zolertia;
and also companies that directly sponsored development time:
Cisco Systems, Eïsox, Eistec, Ell-i, Engineering Spirit, Mesotic, Nordic, OTA keys and Phytec.
We also would like to thank people from Inria Chile for their work on
OpenThread integration and Semtech LoRa drivers.

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 pkg are published under a separate license.

All code files contain licensing information.