Changes from Contiki 2.6 to Contiki 2.7

[adamdunkels]

This issue is here just to hold the changelog between Contiki 2.6 and Contiki 2.7.

This is a massive update that brings an unprecedented amount of stability improvements and bugfixes to Contiki. Highlights:

New features and mechanisms:

• Regression test framework
• Travis integration
• New code style script
• mDNS
• Trickle timer library
• Compiler output less verbose

Severe bugfixes in:

• CSMA
• 802.15.4 framer
• Nullrdc
• ContikiMAC
• 6lowpan fragmentation handling
• IPv6
• RPL routing

IPv6 stack:

• IPv6 neighbor table refactorization
• IPv6 routing table refactorization
• RPL rewrite
• RPL auto-repair of failed routes
• IPv6 stack monitor if neighbor fails
• Callbacks on routing table changes
• 6lowpan: allow the maximum radio frame size to be configured

Platforms:

• New TI CC2538 802.15.4 System-on-a-Chip platform
• New PIC32 / SeedEye platform
• STM32w updated
• CC2430 updated
• MC1322x updated

Cooja:

• Support for link-layer ACKs
• Improved stack monitoring and stack overflow triggering
• Improved radiologger: duplicate packets now collapsed
• Improved Timeline handling
• Support for CC1101, CC1120, and ENC28J60 emulation
• MSPsim support for MSP430x instruction set, verified against hardware

[areaarea]

Is this live or proposed? There are quite a few cc2538 and core enhancements on the table already (pull requests) that I would love to see be pulled in for a minor stepping.

[adamdunkels]

These are the changes for the 2.7 release. Agree that there are a whole bunch of really good pull requests (particularly for the cc2538) but we need to have a new version out, then move on to the next major release (3.x).

[simonduq]

Great to hear the next release is 3.x @adamdunkels :) Something I'd really love to have is a roadmap towards this next major release. What would you think about opening a thread on this, so people can discuss and agree an common goals and define what Contiki 3 will be?

From the top of my head, I can think of things such as:

• update standard protocols to ensure RFC-compliance
• implement missing standard of the low-power IP stack (e.g. 6lowpan-nd)
• implement 802.15.4e MAC layers (at least CSL (ContikiMAC/Drowsy-style), TSCH and possibly solutions from the IETF 6TiSCH working group)
• get rid of dependencies between IPv6 and Rime
• tickles timers, which become more and more important in recent platforms where the CPU is responsible for a significant part of the energy consumption
• cleanup the whole tree, removing unused apps and examples, having for example a single webserver etc
• move platform-specific code outside of core (e.g. cc2420)
• cleanup platforms: much of the code often started from copy paste (in particular main.c and conf.h files), and then got more or less updated or drifted slowly

There are also more general discussions that could be good to have:

• do we want to refocus on IPv6?
• do we want to refocus on IoT devices only?

I can guess many of the above proposals will have some haters, that's why I'd like to have a place to discuss them, with as a final goal to actually decide what should be done or not.

I believe people will be ready to start significant hacking hacking work if they know that the community eventually wants the feature integrated. Applies to me at least :)

[g-oikonomou]

Agree with @simonduq , I was thinking of a opening issues and setting a 3.0 milestone for some of those fixes/enhancements.

If I may add to the list:

• Configuration system sanity (cough)
• Debug infrastructure (another one of them epic threads in contiki-developers)

• tickles timers, which become more and more important in recent platforms where the CPU is responsible for a significant part of the energy consumption

That one exists already ;)

[adamdunkels]

Haha great minds think alike :) I just sent out a mail to the mailing list about this. But maybe we should just open up an issue here directly to make this easier to organize?

[g-oikonomou]

But let's not all do it at the same time :) I'll knock something together

[simonduq]

Very comforting to read we have so many things in common in our wishlist! Makes me confident Contiki 3 will be a very significant step forward. @g-oikonomou I also regards the config and debug systems as top priorities.

[alignan]

Closing as Contiki 3.0 is out.