Fuchsia F8 release notes

F8.0 updates

Date: October 31, 2022

Version: F8.0

The following updates have been implemented.

Component Framework

The number of component manifest (.cmx) files decreased ~85%, from 1167 files to 189.

Connectivity (Bluetooth, IOT, WLAN, Netstack)

WLAN

Core
  • Improvements have been made for the following:
    • WPA1, WPA2, and WPA3 compatibility for legacy APs.
    • Internal WEP key encoding/decoding.
    • Internal handling of supported rates and authentications.
  • FullMAC and SoftMAC reconnect APIs have been simplified.
  • Migration to fuchsia.wlan.sme.GenericSme API has been completed.
Drivers

Broadcom WLAN driver (brcmfmac) updates include the following:

  • Migrated to netdevice model for data path operations, and new (re)connect API, which also helps with simpler WEP key handling.
  • Race condition in EAPOL message handshake has been fixed.
Netstack

Netdevice WLAN migration completed to improve performance. See more details in the Drivers section.

Thread
  • Provisional Thread 1.3 Certification has been provided.
  • Thread network now creates/starts automatically.
  • Thread border routing has been enabled.

Graphics and Media

  • Power efficiency improvements.
  • Various memory-saving changes have been made, resulting in more reliable media playback.

HCI (Input, A11y, i18n, and View System)

  • Mouse acceleration has been implemented.
  • Emoji fonts have been added.

Rust

Issue: An issue preventing rustup users from linking binaries for Fuchsia.

Link: Use llvm-libunwind="in-tree" for Fuchsia targets

Impact: Issue has been fixed.

Software Assembly

  • ffx assembly now supports setting session URLs at assembly time, which allows reconfiguration of the session without rebuilding the platform.
  • ffx assembly now supports product-provided base packages, cache packages, and config_data for both of those package sets.

Software Delivery

  • Eager package updates have been introduced into omaha-client and pkg-resolver. Update for the Omaha Client Update Protocol to support persistence of updated packages across reboots.
  • pkgfs removed and replaced its functionality with pkg-cache, written in Rust.

Testing

The following updates have been made for Platform:

  • Various stability fixes.
  • Support added for running out-of-tree (OOT) tests.
  • Refactored and simplified code path.

Trusted Platform Services (TPS)

Simplified the account APIs to remove features that were no longer required.

Virtualization

  • The virtio_block device has been migrated from C++ to Rust.
  • The bulk of virtualization components have been converted to CFv2.
  • Support has been added for creating guests with more than 4GiB of memory.

F8.1 updates

Date: November 17, 2022

Version: F8.1

The following updates have been implemented.

Connectivity

  • Matter support delivered to Smart Displays.

Issue: Potential deadlock in netstack in which brcmfmac stops providing buffers.
Impact: Potential deadlock issue has been resolved.

Other Changes

Issue: Inconsistency between on-device settings and cloud settings that caused some devices to unexpectedly restart.
Impact: Inconsistency issue has been fixed.

F8.1.1 updates

Date: December 5, 2022

Version: F8.1.1

The following updates have been implemented.

Communication

Issue: Some Matter enabled devices fail commissioning with "Thread border router required" error on F8.1 on the Google Home App.
Impact: Commissioning fix was implemented to read borderAgentID from DNS SD TXT in the affected cases.

Issue: The mDNS service was not asking for missing A/AAAA/TXT records if they were not provided in the response.
Impact: Query fix was implemented to proactively request SRV/TXT/A/AAAA if needed.