Zephyr Takes the World by Storm Today: Two Major Summits Held Simultaneously!
Today is the “Spring Festival” for Zephyr enthusiasts. On this day (November 5), the Zephyr project will hold heavyweight meetings in two major arenas (online + offline) around the globe:
- North America (Offline): Zephyr will host an offline developer meetup in Anaheim, coinciding with the Embedded World North America 2025 exhibition. NXP, Renesas, Qt Group, and Antmicro will deliver keynote speeches, and there will be a lottery for development boards sponsored by companies like Infineon.
- Global (Online): The well-known tech media Elektor will simultaneously hold the online conference “Zephyr – Open RTOS for Tomorrow’s Devices.” The conference will delve into Zephyr’s security practices, TinyML applications, and (most importantly) how to write Zephyr applications using Rust.
Core Storm:
With simultaneous online (technical depth) and offline (vendor ecosystem) events, this marks the beginning of a “high-speed expansion phase” for the Zephyr community and its commercial ecosystem.
🌐 Community Pulse
- NXP Bets on Bluetooth Classic Audio At today’s Anaheim meetup, NXP’s presentation topic is “Enhancing Bluetooth Audio in Zephyr: Bringing Bluetooth Classic to the Party.” [Brief Interpretation]: Zephyr has long been a leader in the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) field, but NXP’s move indicates that major vendors are trying to introduce Zephyr into broader and more traditional markets like “Bluetooth Classic Audio” (e.g., in-car calls, traditional speakers).
- Qt and Antmicro Showcase UI and AI The other two key presentations today are “Building Embedded UI with Zephyr” by Qt Group and “Zephyr AI Development (AutoML)” by Antmicro. [Brief Interpretation]: Zephyr is addressing its “shortcomings.” It is no longer just an RTOS that runs in a black box; it is officially entering the fields of “screened” GUI and “algorithm-driven” AI.
🛠️ Hardcore Updates
- Follow-up: CAN Bus Reentrancy Bug (PR #98712)[Status]: Still undergoing intensive CI testing. [Phenomenon]: There is a reentrancy risk between can_tx_callback (send completion callback) and the can_send() API. [Recommendation]: The hard freeze for 4.3.0 RC3 is imminent (November 7), and this bug has not yet been merged. This indicates that the community is extremely cautious about this fix. Please do not conduct high-reliability testing of the CAN bus on the main branch before official merging.
- 4.3.0 API Deprecation Warning (Reminder) The 4.3.0 version has “deprecated” a large number of old APIs. If your code is still using the following interfaces, it will fail to compile directly upon upgrade:
- SPI: Third parameter of macros like SPI_CONFIG_DT, SPI_DT_SPEC_GET, etc.
- Bluetooth: bt_ctlr_set_public_addr()
- POSIX: CONFIG_POSIX_READER_WRITER_LOCKS
📊 GitHub Activity (Last 24h)
Data Dashboard (Past 24h):
- zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr (main branch)
- Total Commits: 42
- New PRs: 9
- Merged PRs: 21
- Active Subsystems:
- doc/: 13 commits
- drivers/: 10 commits (mainly for gpio, sensor)
- tests/: 8 commits
- kernel/: 2 commits
- Active HAL Repositories:
- hal_stm32: (Updated 10 hours ago)
- awesome-zephyr-rtos: (Updated 15 hours ago) – “Zephyr Resource Collection” project updated
[Brief Interpretation]:
The data once again confirms the characteristics of the “eve before release.” “Merged PRs (21)” far exceed “New PRs (9)”, indicating that the community is frantically “wrapping up” and clearing backlogged PRs in preparation for the hard freeze of RC3. The doc/ module has become the most active (13 commits), indicating that developers are frantically writing documentation before the release. The kernel/ remains stable (only 2 commits).
🎓 Weekly Deep Dive
Topic: West (Zephyr’s “Swiss Army Knife”)
If you are still using git clone –recursive to pull Zephyr, you are already behind. The soul tool of Zephyr is west.
[Brief Interpretation]:
West (Zephyr’s meta-tool) is Zephyr’s “package manager” and “build tool.” It addresses two pain points in traditional RTOS development:
- Multi-repository Hell (“Dependency Drift”)
- Previously: Zephyr main repository, mcuboot, hal_stm32, lvgl… You had to manually git clone 5-6 repositories and ensure their versions were compatible (Repo A’s main depends on Repo B’s v2.1), which was extremely painful.
- Now: You only need one west.yml (manifest file). Run west update, and west will automatically pull all dependencies and automatically checkout to the “mutually compatible” specified commit.
- Inconsistent Build Commands
- Previously: Compile with cmake, flash with nrfjprog or JLinkExe, and debug with a different set of commands.
- Now: west build (compile), west flash (flash), west debug (debug). West helps you call all the toolchains at the bottom; you only need to remember west.
Conclusion:
West is the answer for Zephyr to solve “engineering complexity.” It allows developers to “manage” the vast Zephyr ecosystem (main repository + modules + HALs) with a single command.
🔥 My Hot Take
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This Issue’s Hot Take: Why is Zephyr “self-fighting” today, holding two meetings in North America and online on the same day?
I actually think this is a layout by “operational experts.”
- Offline (North America): This is for “big clients” and “vendors” to showcase muscle and display the ecosystem (NXP, Renesas, Qt). This is **”face value”**.
- Online (Global): This is for “frontline developers” to discuss technology and practical content (Rust, TinyML, security). This is **”substance”**.
Zephyr has figured it out: “Substance” (technical community) + “Face Value” (commercial ecosystem) = Market Monopoly.
What do you think? Are you more concerned about the online Rust or the offline vendor demos?