Documentation/ReleaseNotes/NuttX-6.28

NuttX-6.28
----------

The 95th release of NuttX, Version 6.28, was made on June 14, 2013,
and is available for download from the SourceForge website. Note
that release consists of two tarballs: nuttx-6.28.tar.gz and
apps-6.28.tar.gz. Both may be needed (see the top-level nuttx/README.txt
file for build information).

Additional new features and extended functionality:

* File Systems:

- SMART FLASH file system (contributed by Add Ken Pettit).

* MTD (FLASH) Drivers:

- Add support of MTD partitions via a new MTD driver that manages a
set of MTD devices, each managing a subset of the FLASH region
managed by the parent MTD driver.
- Extended the MTD interface to provide an (optional) method to
perform byte oriented writes if supported by the FLASH part.
- M25Px driver re-architected to use the byte write capability (when
possible) and to use 4KB sectors for the erase block size when the
part supports it (from Ken Pettit).

* LCD Drivers:

- New interface definitions to support audio devices (from Ken Pettit)
and alphanumeric, segment LCDs.

* Wireless Drivers:

- Added new driver for the wireless nRF24L01+ transceiver (from
Laurent Latil).

* Calypso:

- Added support for the Pirelli DP-L10 phone (from Craig Comstock via
Alan Alan Carvalho de Assis)

* STM32:

- Added an option to conditionally disable the "wfi" sleep mode. This
is needed with certain JTAG debuggers to prevent the debug session
from being disconnected (from Ken Pettit).
- Added support for the STM32L (STM32L15X/STM32L16x) family.
- Added STM32F103C4 and F103C8 chip support (from Laurent Latil).
- Added a new interface function, stm32_dmacapable() that can be used
to determine if DMA is possible from the specified memory address
(from Petteri Aimonen)

* STM32 Drivers:

- If CONFIG_STM32_DMACAPABLE is defined, the STM32 SPI driver now uses
stm32_dmacapable() to determine if it is possible to perform DMA
from the specified address. This change is important for the STM32
F4 which may have SPI data buffers allocated on the stack in CCM
memory which cannot support the DMA (from Petteri Aimonen).

* STM32 Boards:

- Support added for the MikroElektronika Mikromedia for STM32F4
development board (from Ken Pettit) with the MIO283QT2 LCD and
touchscreen. Several graphics configurations are included.
- The HY-mini STM32v board now uses the common SSD1289 driver
and supported the card detect interrupt. Several new
configurations also added and some removed (from Laurent Latil).
- Support added for the R65105-based LCD that comes with some
HY-Mini STM32v boards (from Christian Faure).
- Added basic support for the STM32L-Discovery board. Drivers
for the on-board segment LCD are included.
- Added support for the STM32 Tiny development board based on the
STM32 F103C8T6 MCU. This includes support for the nRF24L01+
wireless on the board (from Laurent Latil).

* Stellaris LM3S/LM4F:

- Support added for a TI/Stellaris internal FLASH MTD driver (from Max
Holtzberg).

* Stellaris LM4F Boards:

- The LM3S6965-EK now has configurations for the UDP discovery tool and
for the TCP echo server (both from Max Holtzberg)

* Atmel ATSAM3/4:

- Reorganized, renamed, and updated directory structure to better
support additional members of the SAM3/4 family.
- Added support for both the ATSAM4S and ATSAM4L families. The
ATSAM4S is similar to the ATSAM3U, but the ATSAM4L is quite a
different beast, really much more akin to the AVR32s SoCs but
with a Cortex-M4.

* Atmel ATSAM3/4 Boards:

- Added support for the Atmel SAM4L Xplained Pro development board.
This board features the ATSAM4LC4C MCU (Cortex-M4 with 256KB FLASH +
32KB SRAM).
- Added support for the Atmel SAM4S Xplained development board. This
board features the ATSAM4S16C MCU (Cortex-M4 with 1MB FLASH + 128KB
SRAM).

* PIC32MX Boards:

- Added support for the 1602 segment LCD on-board the Sure PIC32MX
board. This board will now also support a USB NuttX console and
the USB monitor test program.

* Build System:

- Clean-up of almost all .gitignore files: Made scope of ignore to be
only the current directory; Ignore .dSYM files in directories where
.exe's may be built. Also, in Makefiles, clean .dSYM files in
directories where an .exe may be built.
- Standardize and consolidated all build-as-an-NSH-application
configuration settings. Now only CONFIG_NSH_BUILTIN_APPS is
sufficient to build an application, test, or or example as an NSH
builtin application.
- Added support for a generic ARM, ARMv6-M and ARMv7-M Windows EABI
toolchains.

* Libraries:

- Added encoder/decoder logic to marshal and serialize special segment
LCD (SLCD) commands intermixed with normal ASCII data. This is the
similar to the encoding/decoding logic that is used to marshal
special commands from a keyboard.
- Add dprintf() and vdprintf() (the latter from Andrew Tridgell).
- Add an application that may be built as an NSH builtin command that
will erase FLASH using a flash_eraseall NSH command (from Ken Pettit).

* Applications:

- Added an MTD partition test/examples. Currently used with (1) the a
simulation configuration to test MTD partitions on a RAM emulation
of FLASH and (2) with the Mikroe STM32F4 configuration.
- Added a test/example to verify alphanumeric, segment LCDs.
- Added a simple single threaded, poll based TCP echo server based
on W. Richard Stevens UNIX Network Programming Book (from Max
Holtzberg).
- Added several tests of the SMART block driver and file system (from
Ken Pettit).
- Added a runtime configuration for the UDP discover utility (from
Max Holtzberg).
- Added an example application to demo the nRF24L01 driver (from
Laurent Latil).
- New and modified NSH commands:
Added a -h option to the df command to show the volume information
in human readable form (from Ken Petit).
Add a new mksmartfs command (from Ken Petit).

Efforts In Progress. The following are features that are partially
implemented but present in this release. Most are expected to be fully
available in NuttX 6.28.

* Audio System:

- A complete audio subsystem include CODECs, higher level management,
interface definitions, and audio drivers was contributed by Ken
Pettit. This work has not been completely verified as of this
release and so is categorized as a work-in-progress. At present,
progress is blocked due to issues interfacing with the VS1053
audio DAC on the Mikroe STM32F4 board.

* kconfig-fronted Configuration:

- Conversion of old configurations to use the kconfig-frontends
tool is an ongoing effort that will continue for some time.
At this time, only 43% of the configurations have been converted
to use the kconfig-frontends tools.

Bugfixes (see the ChangeLog for details). Some of these are very important:

* Tasking:

- Modify assertion in the priority inheritance logic that is reported
to cause false alarm assertions.

* Kernel Build:

- Typo in syscall proxying logic corrected by Ken Pettit.

* Networking:

- Poll setup/teardown logic should ignore invalid (i.e., negative)
file descriptors (from Max Holtzberg).
- When readahead data is available, the network poll() logic should
set POLLIN (or POLLRDNORM), not POLLOUT (from Max Holtzberg).

* LCD Drivers:

- Correct power controls in the MIO283QT2 LCD driver.

* USB Device Controller Drivers:

- Change the default IN request buffer size from 64 to 96. This will
avoid requests of exactly MAXPACKET size and, hence, avoid so many
NULL packets. Also, fix the OUT request buffers size to exactly the
max packet size. It really cannot be any other size.

* STM32 Drivers:

- Correct some bad STM32 F1 DMA definitions that crept into the system
a few months ago a broke STM32 F1 DMA (from Laurent Latil)
- Fixed an error in NULL packet handling in the STM32 F1 USB device
controller driver: If the NULL-packet needed flag ever got set,
then it was not being cleared and infinite NULL packets resulted.
This only affects the CDC/ACM class and was the cause of the
failures using the USB CDC/ACM device as a NuttX console. With this
change the USB works well as an alternative NuttX console device for
the STM32 F1 family.
- Correct some bad condition compilation in the RCC logic (CONFIG_
missing from setting names). This affects some STM32 FLASH pre-
fetch settings (from Lorenz Meier).
- Change for hardware flow control support for STM32. The change also
fixes incorrect operation of USART2 and UART5 in current master
(from Lorenz Meier and Mike Smith).
- Fixed a backward conditional in USB OTG FS host controller driver
that prevented detection of disconnection events (from Scott).

* LPC17xx Drivers:

- I2C interrupt control. Also correction for a single byte read
timeout error (from M. Kannan).

* Freescale Kinetis:

- Freedom KL25Z pin multiplexing and LED control corrections (from
Alan Carvalho de Assis)

* PIC32MX:

- Fix NULL packet handling in the PIC32 USB device driver. Without
this fix the CDC/ACM driver cannot be used reliably with the PIC32
USB. With this change the USB works well as an alternative NuttX
console device.

* Graphics:

- Default priorities for NxWidget and NxWM threads should be 100,
not 50, to be consistent with other default priorities.

* Applications:

- Remove the CONFIG_EXAMPLES_NXTEXT_NOGETRUN option from the NXTEXT
example. The test logic was bad for the case where this options is
not selected. Also, completed the empty Kconfig file.
- C++ name mangling was occurring when this example is built as an NSH
built-in application causing the entry to be undefined when called
from C code.
- Add some missing NSH library configuration values (from Lorenz
Meier).