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Newsletter update
This newsletter is closing in on two years of operation. I'd love to hear some feedback. I'm not going to make a form or survey but I will ask that you reply to this email with some feedback if you have anything to add about the following:
- How are we doing overall?
- Do you read it?
- What parts do you read and how thoroughly?
- Things you like
- Things you dislike
- Things you want to see in the newsletter
Thanks, I enjoy putting this together and hope it is useful to you all. -Lars (of Underjord.io)
Official project updates
Lots of updates so I'll share Frank's general announcement from the Slack:
If you're watching the Nerves repositories, there are a LOT of releases in progress, but don't worry about upgrading. Here's the TLDR:
1. The Nerves toolchains v1.7.0 release uses GCC 11.3 just like the 1.6.x releases. It's almost the same, but includes a 64-bit RISC-V glibc toolchain. This is to support Rustler Precompiled on RISC-V which is probably not a big deal for most users.
2. The Nerves toolchains v1.8.0 release is going out shortly too. It's a GCC 12.2 toolchain that we're going to start trying out.
3. Nerves systems will be going out with a bunch of Erlang and Linux security/bug fix updates. It uses the Nerves 1.6.x toolchains since we've been testing with those. It's not a mistake that we're not using the new toolchains.
And regarding the RISC-V stuff (this primarily concerns the Mango Pi MQ Pro which has a working Nerves system):
At some point, we're going to have Bumblebee running on it. There are a decent number of pieces before that's viable. However it's looking like Rust projects will work on 64-bit RISC-V Nerves projects, and if you use rustler_precompiled, it will be super easy to share with others. See https://github.com/elixir-nx/tokenizers/pull/27 for an example update to one Rust project.
If you've been under a rock for a bit. This is Bumblebee, existing ML models adapted to Nx and Elixir. Rumor has it that Frank has already tried running one of these models on a Pi 4 CPU. Rumor also says it was not very fast.
On to all the updates:
System updates
- Updates
- Update Livebook to v0.8.0
- Reduced logger level to warning to reduce clutter when evaluating cells. This is a the same default level as regular Livebook.
- Support the shutdown button. This will gracefully power off your device. Note that Nerves Livebook syncs notebooks to minimizing losing notebook changes already, but this is an additional way to make sure everything has been flushed to storage when you’re done.
- Update Nerves systems to nerves_system_br 1.21.6 versions (Erlang/OTP 25.2)
- Update all provided mix libraries to their latest.
Updates:
- Update Nerves systems to nerves_system_br v1.21.6 (Erlang/OTP 25.2)
- Update to Elixir 1.14.2
All the other systems get essentially these updates:
Changes
- Two Buildroot patch updates and an Erlang minor version update
- Nerves Heart v2.0 is now
included. Nerves Heart connects the Erlang runtime to a hardware watchdog. v2.0 has numerous updates to improve information that you can get and also has more safeguards to avoid conditions that could cause a device to hang forever.
Updated dependencies
- Raspberry Pi systems
- linux 5.15.78 (RPi 1.20221104)
Systems:
- nerves_system_vultr, v0.18.2
- nerves_system_x86_64, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi0, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi2, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi3, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi3a, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_rpi4, v1.21.2
- nerves_system_bbb, v2.16.2
- nerves_system_grisp2, v0.5.2
- nerves_system_osd32mp1, v0.12.2
Other updates & details
This is a security/bug fix release for v1.21.4.
Fixes
- Pull in RTL8723DS driver updates so that it compiles on Linux 6.1. This fixes an issue building the latest Allwinner D1 (RISC-V) kernel updates.
Package updates
Fixes
- Revert RTL8723DS driver update due to an incompatibility with the Allwinner D1 Linux 5.19 branch. It works with Linux 6.1 and these patches are included in Buildroot 2022.11, so upgrading
Allwinner D1 systems will eventually be required.
- Revert RTL8723DS driver update due to an incompatibility with the Allwinner D1 Linux 5.19 branch. It works with Linux 6.1 and these patches are included in Buildroot 2022.11, so upgrading
Allwinner D1 systems will eventually be required.
Package updates
This update pulls in Buildroot 2022.11. Most projects that work with nerves_system_br v1.21.x shouldn’t need any changes with this update, but please review the Buildroot release notes.
Updates
Support Crosstool-NG-built RISC-V glibc toolchains
Package updates
This release adds a riscv64 glibc toolchain since that has more support than muslc in the RISC-V community at the moment.
Changes
- Removes Python scripting support in gdb (fixes toolchain compilation and probably not used)
- Remove the static toolchain option since it was being ignored on MacOS. On Linux, it disabled LTO. LTO is included on all platforms now (the default).
- Fixes runtime dependency on libzstd another way by forcibly turning it off with a Crosstool-NG option rather than adding a configure flag. This is possible now. Previously the option was hidden due to the static toolchain option.
- Let gcc determine the correct option for SJLJ (setjmp/longjmp). The note where it doesn’t work doesn’t apply to Nerves platforms.
Tool versions
- GCC 11.3
- glibc 2.36 (New!)
- musl 1.2.3
- Linux 4.19 headers except for RISC-V. RISC-V uses Linux 5.10 headers.
This release bumps GCC from 11.3 to 12.2.
- Tool versions
- GCC 12.2 (https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-12/changes.html)
- glibc 2.36
- musl 1.2.3
- Linux 4.19 headers except for RISC-V. RISC-V uses Linux
5.10 headers
Community updates
Puppets and Nerves! The Code BEAM America 2022 talks are here!
The playlist is here. Of special relevance to Nerves is:
Build animatronics with Nerves by Flora Petterson (@floralouise@techhub.social)
Keep an eye out for an upcoming BEAM Radio episode as well.
Keynote Panel hosted by Randall Thomas
Guests: Frank Hunleth, Boyd Multerer, Amos King and Andy King
Keynote: Security Under the BEAM by Boy Multerer
Evision smart cells for computer vision models
Cocoa keeps delivering cool stuff. Evision is really neat if you want to do OpenCV under Elixir and as such can help us with Nerves work and cameras. They just launched a "model zoo" for Livebook that gives you some quick ways to see how to use it for a number of interesting tasks such as face detection, detecting people outlines and such.
Tweet announcing the thing.
Nerves Meetup on 28th of December
The next event looks to be 28th of December. Double-check from your own device as it usually lies to me. It is telling me 29th over here :P
Keep an eye on the Meetup page for updates.
Supporting the Nerves project
We want to encourage everyone to contribute in whatever way works for them. Here are some ways we currently recommend:
- Write or port a new hardware library and include it in the Elixir Circuits collection.
- Give money to the project via Open Collective.
- Get in touch about taking over maintenance duties for some libraries, we might be able to provide you hardware.
- Apply for an EEF stipend on something Nerves-related and build it. We can help if you have questions about this.
- Send corrections or improvements for documentation wherever it fails to help you.
- Write about Nerves, give talks about Nerves. Make videos about Nerves. It is all good.
Finally, if you have questions about the newsletter or want to suggest something you can simply respond to this email it will go directly to me, Lars, who edits this thing. Let me know what you think.
- Lars, Underjord.io
