Volttron

This release fixes bugs that were introduced with the addition of the dynamic rpc capability for 8.1 and through testing of different versions of python. This release targets 3.6.9 version of python, but has been tested with versions up to 3.9.

- [ 2778 ] An issue with vcfg where the vip identity of SQLHistorian wasn't platform.historian
- [ 2779 ] An issue with setuptools < 40
- [ 2790 ] Upgrading from 7.x volttron issue
- [ 2796 ] Pinned pyzmq and removed duplicate entry between requirements.py and bootstrap.py

A volttron-upgrade function has been added to upgrade the location of backup.sqlite for historian as well as updating auth.json file for any version of auth.json since 6.x See [README.](https://github.com/VOLTTRON/volttron/tree/releases/8.1.1#upgrading-to-volttron-8x)

This release contains new features, fixes to issues reported by the community and the development team. The following list highlights the most notable changes included in 8.1:

- Historian related changes
- Support for newer version of Mysql 8.0.
- Updated SQL historians schema to combine topics and metadata into the same table. The new version of historian will work with existing tables (i.e. old schema) if tables already exists.
- Updated SQL aggregate historian schema to store aggregates as double precision number instead of text – removed support for string aggregations such as GROUP_CONCAT.
- Ability to allow capabilities to RPCs dynamically at run time.
- Bug fixes for RabbitMQ federation and shovel. Added pytests for RabbitMQ federation and shovel.
- Updated tests for web authentication.
- Added testing of RabbitMQ VOLTTRON into Github actions/workflows.
- Video tutorial on overview of platform driver.
- Moved agents contributed by external community into 'services/core/contrib' folder, agents that may work but is not actively maintained by PNNL team into 'services/core/unsupported' and agents that are deprecated into 'deprecated' folder.

Known Issues:
- RabbitMQ VOLTTRON does not work in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
- There is a 6-7 compatibility issue when forwarding data from 6 instance to 7 instance

This is full release of 8.0 version of VOLTTRON. This incorporates community feedback from the release candidate as well as new contributions and features.

⦁ Added a video tutorial for historian framework that walks through historian features and installation process (https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/, https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/agent-framework/historian-agents/historian-framework.html?highlight=video#historian-video-tutorial)
⦁ Renamed MasterDriver to PlatformDriver, MasterWebService to PlatformWebService and updated all associated documentation
⦁ Added command line support to authenticate remote ZeroMQ/RabbitMQ message bus-based connections
⦁ Added CSR support for multi-platform federation connection
⦁ Created github workflow to run VOLTTRON tests on github
⦁ Improved VOLTTRON test framework for automated unit and integration tests
⦁ Installation of agents is made available through volttron-ctl (vctl). 'vctl install' command will not by default install agent with default configuration.
⦁ All agents by default send heartbeat messages. Agents can opt out by removing default heartbeat configuration
⦁ Updated documentation for VOLTTRON introduction, services core agents and multiplatform deployment in readthedocs (https://volttron.readthedocs.io, https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/agent-framework/operations-agents/index.html, https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/deploying-volttron/multi-platform/index.html)
⦁ Added secure deployment guidance section in VOLTTRON readthedocs based on review comments from Secure Software Central report (https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/deploying-volttron/secure-deployment-considerations.html)
⦁ Minor bug fixes in vctl and vcfg sub commands

This release candidate is the culmination of a large body of work from multiple contributors in the community and includes new features, improved ease of use, and development support. The following list highlights the most notable changes included in 8.0-Release Candidate 1:

- Automated deployment of VOLTTRON platform using recipes (https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/deploying-volttron/recipe-deployment.html) (https://github.com/VOLTTRON/volttron-ansible)

- A new simulation integration framework that simplifies integration with simulation platforms such as HELICS, GridAPPS-D and EnergyPlus

- Refactoring of VOLTTRON documentation (https://volttron.readthedocs.io/en/develop/)

- A new health service that aggregates the health of all the agents connected to VOLTTRON instance

- Updated VOLTTRON docker image to work with VOLTTRON 7.0 version

- Updated base market and MarketService agent to python 3

- Added unit tests for different types of databases supported by historian framework

- Fix for data duplication error when an Historian inserts duplicate data in one transaction (Issue 2445)

- Develop capability to list RPC functions through volttron-ctl (vctl)

- Updated test cases for Volttron Central



Known Issues:

- RabbitMQ VOLTTRON does not work in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

- There is a 6-7 compatibility issue when forwarding data from 6 instance to 7 instance

This is a hot fix release to fix issues 2618, 2619, 2626, 2627

Updates to underlying libraries prevented VOLTTRON from bootstrapping. This hotfix resolves the issues by pinning the versions of third party libraries.

Please report any incompatibilities encountered on your system.

This is a full release of the 7.0 version of VOLTTRON which has been refactored to work with Python3. This incorporates community feedback from the release candidate as well as new contributions and features.
Major new features and highlights since the release candidate include:


- Added secure agent user feature which allows agents to be launched as a user separate from the platform. This protects the platform against malformed or malicious agents accessing platform level files
- Added a driver to interface with the Ecobee smart thermostat and make data available to agents on the platform
- Updated VOLTTRON Central UI to work with Python3
- Added web support to authenticate remote VOLTTRON zmq message bus-based connections
- Updated ZMQ-based multiplatform RPC with Python 3
- To reduce installation size and complexity, fewer services are installed by default
- MasterDriver dependencies are not installed by default during bootstrap. To use MasterDriver, please do **python3 bootstrap.py --driver**
- Web dependencies are not installed by default during bootstrap. To use MasterWeb service, please do **python3 bootstrap.py --web**
- Added initial version of test cases for “volttron-cfg” utility
- On all arm-based systems, libffi is now a required dependency, this is reflected in the installation instruction
- On arm-based systems, Raspbian >= 10 or Ubuntu >= 18.04 is required
- Updated examples and several contributed features to Python 3
- Inclusion of docker in test handling for databases
- A new '/gs' endpoint to access platform services without using Volttron Central through Json RPC
- A new SCPAgent to transfer files between two remote systems

Known Issues:
- Continued documentation updates to ensure correctness
- Rainforest Eagle driver is not yet upgraded to Python3
- A bug in the Modbus TK library prevents creating connections from 2 different masters to a single slave.
- BACnet Proxy Agent and BACnet auto configuration scripts require the version of BACPypes installed in the virtual environment of VOLTTRON to be version 0.16.7. We have pinned it to version 0.16.7 since it does not work properly in later versions of BACPypes.
- VOLTTRON 7.0 code base is not fully tested in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS so issues arising from it is not addressed