Project Updates

Did you know that NervesHub has a CLI tool? It hasn't been heavily promoted. Probably because it was kind of rough. But it is very useful.

I've seen that people using NervesHub don't initially hear about the CLI so I figure it deserves a moment.

I have used it heavily for demos of NervesHub in my talks. It allows most of the functionality of the Web UI and some that might not even have UI. The most important bits:

• Authentication
• Sign firmware
• Upload/publish firmware, with or without deployment
• Update deployments to new firmware
• List orgs, products, devices

This is all based on the API that the NervesHub web service provides and the CLI makes it more convenient to auth and then automate against the API.

The recent work below makes it a lot smoother to use because it no longer needs to be a development dependency of your project. Instead you can have an escript installed and alias it to something short. More details below.

Project updates

nerves_hub_cli, v2.1.0

This updates NervesHubCLI to be installable as an escript which can be installed with mix escript.install hex nerves_hub_cli. See the README for more information on installation and usage. A lot of credit to Gus Workman for his labor on this.

Mix tasks are still available for use, but will soon be deprecated. To support escript, mix nerves_hub.firmware removed the ability to infer a firmware location for sign and publish commands. Instead, firmware path must be included as an argument:

mix nerves_hub.firmware publish /path/to/firmware mix nerves_hub.firmware sign /path/to/firmware

nerves_hub_web, v2.2.0

The changelog for this one hasn't been fully cooked into a release but the tag is available. If you deployed v2.1.0 and was adding new devices or trying to move devices between deployments you may have hit an awkward state with trying to change deployments. There was no UI for moving a device or removing a device from the deployment. This version addresses that situation and includes many other improvements. I've sounded the bell to get us a proper changelog and release notes and if everyone else is busy I suppose I can do it myself.

Deployments have been changing to now only use the tagging rules for devices that do not have a release. Essentially determining initial sorting. This prevents a lot of potential weirdness with which rules hit which device at what time and makes Deployments act more like Deployment Groups. A way to group devices together that should update together. These are underpinnings for much more featureful and capable deployments with better insights about what happens during the actual roll-out of a new firmware version.

nerves_system_br, v1.29.3

This is mostly a security/bug fix update for 1.29.2.

• Package updates

  • Erlang/OTP 27.2
  • Buildroot 2024.08.3
  • fwup 1.12.0

• Changes

  • Add option to rel2fw.sh to support post-processing firmware with dm-verity.

nerves, v1.11.3

This release supports warning-free builds with Elixir 1.18. It should be a low risk update for most users. While not related to this package, if you are using Elixir 1.18, please ensure that :nerves_ssh is at least v1.0.1.

vintage_net_wifi, v0.12.6

• Changes
  • Remove support for upgrading 5+ year old configurations. These probably weren’t used much at all given how early in VintageNetWiFi’s history they were around. If you’re upgrading a device that has not been updated in 5 years, please review differences or you may lose an existing WiFi config.
  • Add docs on forcing the WiFi frequency used when configuring AP mode. Thanks to Ray Chang for this update.

vintage_net, v0.13.6

• Fixes

  • The internet connectivity checker pets the network interface watchdog now when the interface is known to be connected to the LAN or internet. If you’re using the watchdog to reset an interface (like a WiFi module) when it hasn’t had connectivity for a while, this may let you remove user code that did the same thing. If you have a better check that the network interface is working ok when disconnected, then stick with what you have. Thanks to Connor Rigby for this change.
     

• Changed

  • Relax the PropertyTables dependency to allow v0.3 since the backwards incompatibilities don’t affect VintageNet.
  • Incorporate various documentation updates that accumulated
  • Only support Elixir 1.13 and later

nerves_ssh, v1.0.1

This release adds support for Elixir 1.18.

• Fixes
  • Automatically specify or adjust IEx’s :dot_iex option depending on the Elixir version. No changes to user code is needed, but once you upgrade to Elixir 1.18, if you’re specifying a custom :dot_iex_path (unlikely), you should update it.

nerves_uevent, v0.1.1

• Updates
  • Allow property_table v0.3.x to be used
  • Add REUSE compliance
  • Test with latest libraries and Elixir 1.18. This release also removes official support for Elixir 1.9-1.12. Nothing is known to break those versions, but they also aren’t regularly tested.

property_table, v0.3.0

While this release introduces a breaking change, most of the API has been pretty stable for a long time. Consider this a 1.0.0 release candidate.

• Breaking changes

  • Persistence functions raise an exception rather than return :noop when persistence has been disabled.
  • Error tuples all return Exception structs rather than atoms. This cleans up some error handling inconsistencies, but will require changes to any code that tries to interpret the error atoms.
     

• New features

  • Add raising versions (e.g., bang versions) of persistence functions

Participating in the community

The Nerves community is found wherever Elixirists gather. Try any of the following:

Questions are best asked on the Elixir Forum.

Social conversation and banter:

• Elixir Slack, #nerves channel
• Elixir Discord, #nerves channel

How you can help Nerves

Contribute in the way that works for you:

• 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.
• Write or port a new hardware library and include it in the Elixir Circuits collection.
• 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.

Finally, if you have questions about the newsletter or want to suggest something you can simply respond to this email.

- Lars