Release History

See also: CHANGELOG.md on GitHub for the full changelog.

v0.3.5 (2026-08-01)

No library code changes. src/xelp.c and src/xelp.h are byte-identical to 0.3.4 apart from the version macro, and compiled sizes are unchanged on every target. This release fixes and verifies the publishing pipeline, which can only be exercised by tagging.

• Fixed ESP-IDF Component Registry publishing from CI. compote component upload ran without --namespace, defaulting to the espressif namespace instead of deftio. Locally the namespace came from a ~/.espressif profile that does not exist on a CI runner, so the job had failed on every release since 0.3.2 while hand-publishing covered for it.
• Excluded tmp/ from the published component. compote reads only files.exclude, not .gitignore, so packing from a working tree with scratch files produced a 1.27 MB archive instead of 209 KB.
• Release notes can no longer be silently empty. Extraction now anchors on the ## [X.Y.Z] heading for the version being released and fails the release rather than publishing placeholder text.
• actions/checkout v6 → v7, actions/setup-python v5 → v7, and dependabot now groups all action updates into one PR.

v0.3.4 (2026-08-01)

• Fixed: history recall broken on unsigned-char targets (#18). mHistBrowse was a plain char, whose signedness is implementation-defined. Where char is unsigned — most ARM and embedded MCU toolchains — the -1 “not browsing” sentinel stored as 255 and the == -1 test could never fire, so users had to press UP three or more times to recall a single stored command. Reported by @XiaoMu-712.
• History ring indices are now int (mHistWrite, mHistCount, mHistBrowse, mHistSavedLen). This fixes the issue at the type level and removes the undocumented XELP_HIST_DEPTH <= 127 and XELP_CMDBUFSZ <= 128 ceilings the byte-wide fields carried.
• Size note: FULL-profile builds grow on targets where char is unsigned (ARM Thumb 3463 → 3587 bytes) because compilers had been dead-code-eliminating the unreachable first-UP branch — that code now exists and runs. Targets where char is signed (x86, m68k, MIPS) are flat or slightly smaller. KEY and CLI profiles are byte-identical to 0.3.3, since history is not compiled into them.
• make tests-unsigned-char: runs the full unit suite built with -funsigned-char, now part of make validate. x86 and Apple ARM64 default char to signed, so the build matrix had never exercised the case this bug depended on.
• Test suite expanded to 51 units, 707 test cases.

v0.3.3 (2026-05-12)

• Structured argc/argv parsing (XELP_ENABLE_ARGV): new XelpBuf2Argv function tokenizes a command line into a null-terminated argv[] array with quote stripping, escape processing, and configurable max arguments (XELP_ARGV_MAX, default 8). ~530–700 bytes ARM Thumb.
• XELP_PARSE_ARGV(ths, args, len) convenience macro: declares argc/argv and calls XelpBuf2Argv in one line. Recommended for new command handlers.
• XelpArgvInt / XelpArgvStr: extract the Nth argument as an integer or string from an argv array.
• XELP_ARGVBUFSZ: decouples argv scratch buffer size from XELP_CMDBUFSZ. Defaults to XELP_CMDBUFSZ (zero change for existing users); override for variable expansion.
• XELP_ESC_MAP: configurable escape expansion in double-quoted arguments (\n → newline, \t → tab). Set to "" to disable.
• XELP_ENTER_CR / XELP_ENTER_LF: independently enable \r and \n as ENTER in interactive input.
• xelpcfg.h refactored to #ifndef guard pattern with xelp_ovr.h override — selective override without supplying every define.
• const char **argv signatures for const-correctness.
• Fuzz harness for XelpBuf2Argv.
• ESP32 BLE CLI example (examples/esp32-ble-cli/): dual-instance xelp on USB Serial + BLE (Nordic UART Service) with Web Bluetooth terminal, cross-instance messaging, and NeoPixel RGB control.
• Updated READMEs for arduino, arduino-cpp, esp32-wifi, pico-cli, and pico-cli-arduino examples with arduino-cli commands.
• Fixed \r stripping in Web Bluetooth terminals.
• Fixed dev/size_profiles.sh reporting identical sizes for all profiles.
• Test suite expanded to 50 units, 693 test cases.

v0.3.2 (2026-04-26)

• Command history (XELP_ENABLE_HISTORY): UP/DOWN arrow recall of previously entered commands. Fixed-slot ring buffer, configurable depth (XELP_HIST_DEPTH, default 4). Consecutive duplicate suppression, in-progress line save/restore. ~420 bytes ARM Thumb.
• XelpArgInt / XelpArgStr: direct-access convenience functions for getting the Nth argument as an integer or string span in a single call.
• Fixed XELPKEY_BKSP (0x07 BEL): added XELPKEY_BS (0x08) so both backspace codes are accepted.
• Test suite expanded to 47 units, 598 test cases.

v0.3.1 (2026-04-26)

• Function rename: all public functions renamed from XELP prefix to Xelp prefix (e.g. XELPInit → XelpInit). Types, macros, and constants retain XELP.
• Single-line editing (XELP_ENABLE_LINE_EDIT): left/right cursor movement, Home/End, insert-at-cursor, Delete. Eliminates garbage [A characters from arrow keys.
• Multi-byte key support: XELPKEYCODE type and named macros (XELP_KEYCODE_UP, etc.) for ANSI escape sequences in KEY mode dispatch.
• Output control: mOutEnable gates all output; mEchoChar controls echo (normal, off, or mask character).
• XelpArgs sequential argument iterator: XelpArgsInit, XelpNextTok, XelpNextInt, XelpArgCount.
• XelpPutc function for single-character output.
• Fuzz testing with libFuzzer; found and fixed SEGV in XelpTokLineXB.
• Multi-instance stress test (two interleaved instances).
• Cross-build Docker tooling: extract_size.py for robust multi-format size extraction. 18 targets, KEY/CLI/FULL configurations.
• Internal macros converted to static functions (~28 bytes saved).
• Test suite expanded to 39 units, 531 test cases.
• BREAKING: KEY command signature changed from fn(XELP *ths, int key) to fn(XELP *ths, XELPKEYCODE key).

v0.3.0 (2026-04-19)

• BREAKING: CLI command signature changed from fn(const char *args, int len) to fn(XELP *ths, const char *args, int len).
• BREAKING: KEY command signature changed from fn(int key) to fn(XELP *ths, int key).
• BREAKING: XelpBuf macros normalized to SCREAMING_CASE (XELP_XB_INIT, XELP_XB_PUTC, etc.).
• Cross-compilation targets: m68k, RISC-V rv32, Xtensa LX106 added.
• Multi-instance example rewritten to use ths pointer.

v0.2.3 (2026-04-17)

• Fixed 10 bugs across xelp.h, xelp.c, xelpcfg.h
• API naming consistency: all public functions use XELP prefix
• Status codes normalized to SCREAMING_CASE
• XELP_VERSION changed to 32-bit 0x00MMmmpp format
• Replaced defunct Travis CI with GitHub Actions
• Default command handlers (mpfDefKey, mpfDefCLI)
• 100% line coverage of xelp.c (269 test cases)
• Docker cross-compilation tooling, release script, documentation

v0.2.1 (2024-06-05)

• Added XelpParseNum for safer string-to-integer conversion
• Added Arduino example
• Added XelpBufCmp buffer comparison with multiple modes
• Added XelpFindTok token search function
• Expanded unit test coverage

v0.2.0 (2024-02-25) — first GitHub release

• Initial public release on GitHub
• Char-at-a-time CLI parser with KEY, CLI, and THRU modes
• Tokenizer with quoted strings, escape sequences, comments
• Command dispatch for both single-key and CLI modes
• Multi-instance support, no global state
• No dynamic memory allocation
• Platform abstraction layer (5 function pointers)
• Compile-time feature selection via xelpcfg.h
• Posix example with ncurses, unit tests with jumpbug framework
• Support for 8-bit through 64-bit architectures

Project history

xelp predates its GitHub presence by roughly two decades. The original code was written around 2005–2006 as a lightweight debug shell for bare-metal embedded projects. It lived in Subversion for many years, then migrated to Bitbucket (Mercurial, later Git) as those platforms became common in embedded shops.

In 2024 the repository moved to GitHub as a public open-source project. The v0.2.0 tag marks the first GitHub release, not the first version of the library itself.