Firmware releases

[hans65]

I was wondering, on my Sonoff S20 I have Release V2.0-xxxxx installed. Is it possible to install a Release mega-xxxxxx on it
or would I have after the upgrade of the firmware problems using the device?

[Oxyandy]

"Don't fix what aint broke.."
If it works as you need now, then why upgrade ?
And for the most part, you should be able to upgrade as we covered with OTA, if a reason to upgrade exists
And if you must..
Be careful though, as the newer release become padded with fluff... that the size doesn't exceed what is suggested on main page of device
after upload of initial firmware uploader.

[Martinus]

Current github branches and releases are very confusing and it should be fixed.

The V2 was planned for the next stable
The Mega is actually dev/experimental

The tag mega is confusing and incorrect because every branch besides master is MEGA. The name implies that these firmwares only support ESP modules with at least 1 Megabyte of flash size.

Besides that, we have had so much development on the framework and the number of default plugins that we have reached another limitation, being approx 600kb for OTA to be used on 1M models (using two step upgrade procedure)

So yes it could be tricky to upload recent dev firmwares if they exceed 600k on 1M devices like sonoff.

[grovkillen]

Current github branches and releases are very confusing and it should be fixed.

The V2 was planned for the next stable
The Mega is actually dev/experimental

The tag mega is confusing and incorrect because every branch besides master is MEGA. The name implies that these firmwares only support ESP modules with at least 1 Megabyte of flash size.

Actually this is not correct. The v2.0 branch is abandoned as of a month ago. We decided that there was to much new features in the mega branch that was needed in the old v2.0 branch and a merge was too difficult and prone for errors. So I would say that:

• the Mega branch is bond to be the new official stable release within a month (I'm very hopeful that we can achieve this), this will be the 2.0.0 release.

• the name "Mega" is suggesting that the main target will be 1MB+ units.

• for 1MB units a two step OTA is needed if you use the "normal" plugin set using the generic 1024 bin file.

• specific bin files targeting specific hardware (especially Sonoff units) will be provided, these bin files will have much less plugins and a single step OTA will most likely be possible. Edit: NOT possible

• next tag name might be "KNOX" which implies that the focus area of 2.1.0 will be security.

• the mega branch will be renamed development or something and we will not use tag name for branch name as we do today.

So, tag name is only a word describing (mainly to the developers) the focus area and should not be something the average user should need to worry about.

To sum it up. MEGA is still in development and will be released as stable shortly as 2.0.0.

[Martinus]

The v2.0branch is abandoned as of a month ago.

I think i've missed that official statement somehow. Tracing back the Slack conversation and i guess the brief "OK" comment from Edwin on march 22nd should be considered the final decision on that.

I assume the "OK" is also for renaming mega to V2 (if possible)
And the master renamed to V1 (if possible)

So please proceed...

(shouldn't we update the wiki on this as well?)

[grovkillen]

Yes we should.. i'm on it

[Martinus]

I've tried to compile a truly minimum edition on core 2.4.1. Only one controller (_C001) and one plugin (_P001).
Still 482 kB in size. Far too big for a one-step OTA.

But i've read about a tool that does an automatic two-step OTA upgrade, so maybe we should not really be worried about it.

[grovkillen]

Aha, that's too bad... but if we could incorporate a automatic two-step OTA then we're good to go as you suggested

[TD-er]

I've been less available last week, but I really plan on do some serious nerding this evening and tomorrow.
There is still the issue with the WiFi, I will try to fix asap and apart from learning really a lot about wifi, there was even a more important lesson about trying to fix something that wasn't broken after all, but appeared so due to miscommunication. (human2human)

@Martinus: Is there a reason to go for 2.4.1 now?
We never tested that one and are still building on 2.3.0