Zephyr 3.4.0 (Working Draft)

We are pleased to announce the release of Zephyr version 3.4.0.

Major enhancements with this release include:

The following sections provide detailed lists of changes by component.

Security Vulnerability Related

API Changes

Changes in this release

• Any applications using the mcuboot image manager (CONFIG_MCUBOOT_IMG_MANAGER) will now need to also select CONFIG_FLASH_MAP and CONFIG_STREAM_FLASH, this prevents a cmake dependency loop if the image manager Kconfig is enabled manually without also manually enabling the other options.

• Including hawkbit in an application now requires additional Kconfig options to be selected, previously these options would have been selected automatically but have changed from select options in Kconfig files to depends on:

  CONFIG_NVS

  CONFIG_FLASH

  CONFIG_FLASH_MAP

  CONFIG_STREAM_FLASH

  CONFIG_REBOOT

  CONFIG_HWINFO

  CONFIG_NET_TCP

  CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS

  CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER

  CONFIG_NETWORKING

  CONFIG_HTTP_CLIENT

  CONFIG_DNS_RESOLVER

  CONFIG_JSON_LIBRARY

  CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_POSIX_NAMES

  CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT

• Including updatehub in an application now requires additional Kconfig options to be selected, previously these options would have been selected automatically but have changed from select options in Kconfig files to depends on:

  CONFIG_FLASH

  CONFIG_STREAM_FLASH

  CONFIG_FLASH_MAP

  CONFIG_REBOOT

  CONFIG_MCUBOOT_IMG_MANAGER

  CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER

  CONFIG_IMG_ENABLE_IMAGE_CHECK

  CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT

  CONFIG_MPU_ALLOW_FLASH_WRITE

  CONFIG_NETWORKING

  CONFIG_NET_UDP

  CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS

  CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_POSIX_NAMES

  CONFIG_COAP

  CONFIG_DNS_RESOLVER

  CONFIG_JSON_LIBRARY

  CONFIG_HWINFO

• The sensor driver API clarified sensor_trigger_set() to state that the user-allocated sensor trigger will be stored by the driver as a pointer, rather than a copy, and passed back to the handler. This enables the handler to use CONTAINER_OF to retrieve a context pointer when the trigger is embedded in a larger struct and requires that the trigger is not allocated on the stack. Applications that allocate a sensor trigger on the stack need to be updated.

• Converted few drivers to the Input subsystem.

  • gpio_keys: moved out of gpio, replaced the custom API to use input events instead, the zephyr,gpio-keys binding is unchanged but now requires zephyr,code to be set.

  • ft5336: moved from Keyboard Scan to Input, renamed the Kconfig options from CONFIG_KSCAN_FT5336, CONFIG_KSCAN_FT5336_PERIOD and KSCAN_FT5336_INTERRUPT to CONFIG_INPUT_FT5336, CONFIG_INPUT_FT5336_PERIOD and CONFIG_INPUT_FT5336_INTERRUPT.

  • kscan_sdl: moved from Keyboard Scan to Input, renamed the Kconfig option from KSCAN_SDL to CONFIG_INPUT_SDL_TOUCH and the compatible from zephyr,sdl-kscan to zephyr,input-sdl-touch.

  • Touchscreen drivers converted to use the input APIs can use the zephyr,kscan-input driver to maintain Kscan compatilibity.

• The declaration of main() has been changed from void main(void) to int main(void). The main function is required to return the value zero. All other return values are reserved. This aligns Zephyr with the C and C++ language specification requirements for “hosted” environments, avoiding compiler warnings and errors. These compiler messages are generated when applications are built in “hosted” mode (which means without the -ffreestanding compiler flag). As the -ffreestanding flag is currently enabled unless the application is using picolibc, only applications using picolibc will be affected by this change at this time.

Removed APIs in this release

Deprecated in this release

• Configuring applications with prj_<board>.conf files has been deprecated, this should be replaced by using a prj.conf with the common configuration and board-specific configuration in board Kconfig fragments in the boards folder of the application.

Stable API changes in this release

• Removed bt_set_oob_data_flag and replaced it with two new API calls: * bt_le_oob_set_sc_flag() for setting/clearing OOB flag in SC pairing * bt_le_oob_set_legacy_flag() for setting/clearing OOB flag in legacy paring

• SYS_INIT callback no longer requires a device argument. The new callback signature is int f(void). A utility script to automatically migrate existing projects can be found in scripts/utils/migrate_sys_init.py.

New APIs in this release

• Introduced flash_ex_op() function. This allows to perform extra operations on flash devices, defined by Zephyr Flash API or by vendor specific header files. Support for extra operations is enabled by CONFIG_FLASH_EX_OP_ENABLED which depends on CONFIG_FLASH_HAS_EX_OP selected by driver.

Kernel

Architectures

• ARM

• ARM

• ARM64

• RISC-V

• Xtensa

Bluetooth

• Audio

• Direction Finding

• Host

• Mesh

  • Added experimental support for Mesh Protocol d1.1r18 specification.

  • Added experimental support for Mesh Binary Large Object Transfer Model d1.0r04_PRr00 specification.

  • Added experimental support for Mesh Device Firmware Update Model d1.0r04_PRr00 specification.

• Controller

• HCI Driver

Boards & SoC Support

• Added support for these SoC series:

• Removed support for these SoC series:

• Made these changes in other SoC series:

• Added support for these ARC boards:

• Added support for these ARM boards:

  • Seeed Studio Wio Terminal

• Added support for these ARM64 boards:

• Added support for these RISC-V boards:

• Added support for these X86 boards:

• Added support for these Xtensa boards:

• Made these changes for ARC boards:

• Made these changes for ARM boards:

• Made these changes for ARM64 boards:

• Made these changes for RISC-V boards:

• Made these changes for X86 boards:

• Made these changes for Xtensa boards:

• Removed support for these ARC boards:

• Removed support for these ARM boards:

• Removed support for these ARM64 boards:

• Removed support for these RISC-V boards:

  • BeagleV Starlight JH7100

• Removed support for these X86 boards:

• Removed support for these Xtensa boards:

• Made these changes in other boards:

• Added support for these following shields:

Build system and infrastructure

• Fixed an issue whereby older versions of the Zephyr SDK toolchain were used instead of the latest compatible version.

• Fixed an issue whereby building an application with sysbuild and specifying mcuboot’s verification to be checksum only did not build a bootable image.

• Fixed an issue whereby if no prj.conf file was present then board configuration files would not be included by emitting a fatal error. As a result, prj.conf files are now mandatory in projects.

• Introduced support for extending/replacing the signing mechanism in zephyr, see West extending signing for further details.

Drivers and Sensors

• ADC

• MCUX LPADC driver now uses the channel parameter to select a software channel configuration buffer. Use zephyr,input-positive and zephyr,input-negative devicetree properties to select the hardware channel(s) to link a software channel configuration to.

• Battery-backed RAM

  • Added MCP7940N battery-backed RTC SRAM driver.

• CAN

• Clock control

• Counter

• Crypto

• DAC

• DFU

• Disk

• Display

• DMA

• EEPROM

  • Switched from atmel,at24 to dedicated zephyr,i2c-target-eeprom for I2C EEPROM target driver.

• Entropy

• ESPI

• Ethernet

• Flash

  • Introduced new flash API call flash_ex_op() which calls ec_op() callback provided by a flash driver. This allows to perform extra operations on flash devices, defined by Zephyr Flash API or by vendor specific header files. CONFIG_FLASH_HAS_EX_OP should be selected by the driver to indicate that extra operations are supported. To enable extra operations user should select CONFIG_FLASH_EX_OP_ENABLED.

  • nrf_qspi_nor: Replaced custom API function nrf_qspi_nor_base_clock_div_force with nrf_qspi_nor_xip_enable which apart from forcing the clock divider prevents the driver from deactivating the QSPI peripheral so that the XIP operation is actually possible.

• FPGA

• Fuel Gauge

• GPIO

  • Converted the gpio_keys driver to the input subsystem.

• hwinfo

• I2C

• I2S

• I3C

• IEEE 802.15.4

• Input

  • Introduced the Input subsystem.

• Interrupt Controller

• IPM

• KSCAN

  • Added a zephyr,kscan-input input to kscan compatibility driver.

  • Converted the ft5336 and kscan_sdl drivers to the input subsystem.

• LED

• MBOX

• MEMC

• PCIE

• PECI

• Retained memory

  • Retained memory (retained_mem) driver has been added with backends for Nordic nRF GPREGRET, and uninitialised RAM.

Trusted Firmware-M

• Pin control

• PWM

• Power domain

• Regulators

• Reset

• SDHC

• Sensor

• Serial

• SPI

• Timer

  • Support added for stopping Nordic nRF RTC system timer, which fixes an issue when booting applications built in prior version of Zephyr.

• USB

• W1

• Watchdog

• WiFi

Networking

• Wi-Fi

  • TWT intervals are changed from milli-seconds to micro-seconds, interval variables are also renamed.

USB

Devicetree

Libraries / Subsystems

• File systems

  • Added CONFIG_FS_FATFS_REENTRANT to enable the FAT FS reentrant option.

  • With LittleFS as backend, fs_mount() return code was corrected to EFAULT when called with FS_MOUNT_FLAG_NO_FORMAT and the designated LittleFS area could not be mounted because it has not yet been mounted or it required reformatting.

• Management

  • Added optional input expiration to shell MCUmgr transport, this allows returning the shell to normal operation if a complete MCUmgr packet is not received in a specific duration. Can be enabled with CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_SHELL_INPUT_TIMEOUT and timeout set with CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_SHELL_INPUT_TIMEOUT_TIME.

  • MCUmgr fs_mgmt upload and download now caches the file handle to improve throughput when transferring data, the file is no longer opened and closed for each part of a transfer. In addition, new functionality has been added that will allow closing file handles of uploaded/downloaded files if they are idle for a period of time, the timeout is set with MCUMGR_GRP_FS_FILE_AUTOMATIC_IDLE_CLOSE_TIME. There is a new command that can be used to close open file handles which can be used after a file upload is complete to ensure that the file handle is closed correctly, allowing other transports or other parts of the application code to use it.

• RTIO

  • Added policy that every sqe will generate a cqe (previously an RTIO_SQE_TRANSACTION entry would only trigger a cqe on the last sqe in the transaction.

HALs

MCUboot

• Added CONFIG_MCUBOOT_CMAKE_WEST_SIGN_PARAMS that allows to pass arguments to west sign when invoked from cmake.

Storage

Trusted Firmware-M

zcbor

Documentation

Tests and Samples

Issue Related Items

Known Issues

Addressed issues