Levski

Release Date: Nov 9, 2022

Code Freeze: Oct 26, 2022

Namers: Diana Atanasova and Malini Bhandaru (VMWare)

The Levski release is version 2.3 (a third minor release on the second major version - Ireland - made during the summer of 2021. It is therefore backward compatible with all EdgeX 2.x releases. The release is not an LTS release. Jakarta (2.2) remain an LTS release.

Release Major Themes

Commands via Message Bus (also known as North to South message bus communication)
- This is the delivery of commands to the device services via the EdgeX message bus infrastructure (previously this was REST only)
- Allow asynchronous communications from 3rd party systems (applications, Cloud systems, etc) all the way to devices
- Allow for better quality of control (QoS) given the broker implementations provide for various levels. QoS allows for guaranteed delivery and retransmission of messages when necessary. Broker levels allow adopters to pick what level of QoS they want in their implementation without having to change any EdgeX code
System Events (also known as Control Plane Events)
Unit of measure implementation. See https://docs.edgexfoundry.org/2.3/microservices/core/metadata/Ch-Metadata/#units-of-measure
More metrics telemetry (following the beta capability provided in Kamakura) including common service metrics. See https://docs.edgexfoundry.org/2.3/microservices/general/#service-metrics

Additional Features/updates/project improvements

Optional use of NATS as the EdgeX message bus (as an alternative to Redis Pub/Sub and MQTT). NATS is a lightweight protocol with potential for on-device use and has the ability to use common messaging infrastructure at all levels of the stack. Its protocol-level metadata allows 'native' conveyance of the EdgeX message envelope and provides flexible deployment options for HA in some settings
Access to EdgeX MQTT Mosquitto broker is now fully authenticated, including eKuiper access
Securing of Consul with access tokens
Refine the architectural design process to include agreements of Use Case Requirements (UCRs) before the high level design, i.e. the Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) are discussed
EdgeX has earned the "Passing" status at the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF): https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/1226?criteria_level=1. The project is aiming for the Silver level in the next release.
Documentation: addition of building and running EdgeX on native platforms (Linux, Windows, ARM32, etc.) https://docs.edgexfoundry.org/2.3/getting-started/native/Ch-BuildRunNative/
Provide build time options to allow an adopter to remove items that are not needed for their use of the platform (like security). This will help shorten builds as well as make the artefacts smaller.
Upgrade to Go 1.18
Addition of the UART device service (will be released shortly after the initial Levski release date)
Initial construction of the EdgeX Threat Model (will be extended and completed in future releases)
Addition of unit and Angular testing for the EdgeX UI
Better link checking and versioning in the EdgeX docs build process
Further automation in the DevOps release process, in turn eliminating most of the manual steps
First test of GitHub Discussions in order to someday replace Slack (10K limit is not helpful to retain records of project communications