[announcement] Release 3.8.1.0

[Marcus Müller]

Dear hopefully healthiest of all SDR communities to ever graze freely on
the airwaves,

it's taken me way longer than I wanted, but after the release candidate
finally follows release 3.8.1.0 of GNU Radio.

Due to unforeseen crypto hardware trouble, and the presumably temporary
inability to access key backups, I can't offer a release signed with a
trustworthy key. Hopefully, we'll have that situation sorted out by the
next release; to not cause unnecessary confusion through signatures
nobody can verify, you'll only find signify-signed tarballs for now.

Regarding what this release means, and what it is:

This is a release from the GNU Radio 3.8 maintenance release series.
3.8 is our current stable release series, i.e. we're focused on keeping
it running on modern systems and fixing the bugs that we've left in
there for our own future entertainment at an earlier point ;)

Feature work happens mostly on the `master` branch, which will become
GNU Radio 3.9.0.0 at some point. We're at a point where not everything
most users will do is 100% compatible between 3.8.* and master, so it's
a good time to try out our master branch if you want to work on
bleeding-edge stuff. Generally, while we, and I, dedicate very much to
continuing support for 3.8, master (and thus, 3.9) already is more
convenient to develop for in quite a few ways, many revolving around
things we don't do anymore on 3.9 (Python2 compability), and are
abandoning for something less hazardous (replacing SWIG with Pybind11
code). Moving forward is a lot of fun! I really missed that in the 3.7 era.

Best regards,
and happy hacking!

Marcus

#Contributors (a.k.a. people making my maintainer heart feel warm&fuzzy)

* Alba Mendez <address@hidden>
* alekhgupta1441 <address@hidden>
* Anders Kalør <address@hidden>
* Artem Pisarenko <address@hidden>
* Bastian Bloessl <address@hidden>
* Brennan Ashton <address@hidden>
* Chris <address@hidden>
* Clayton Smith <address@hidden>
* CMorin <address@hidden>
* Daniel Estévez <address@hidden>
* Davide Gerhard <address@hidden>
* Derek Kozel <address@hidden>
* duggabe
* Glenn Richardson <address@hidden>
* Grant Cox <address@hidden>
* Gwenhael Goavec-Merou <address@hidden>
* Håkon Vågsether <address@hidden>
* Igor Freire <address@hidden>
* Jacob Gilbert <address@hidden>
* Jan Kraemer <address@hidden>
* japm48
* Johannes Demel <address@hidden>
* Josh Morman <address@hidden>
* karel
* luz.paz
* Marc L <address@hidden>
* Marcus Müller <address@hidden>
* Martin Braun <address@hidden>
* Michael Dickens <address@hidden>
* Michael Roe <address@hidden>
* Nathan West <address@hidden>
* Nick Østergaard <address@hidden>
* Nicolas Cuervo <address@hidden>
* Notou <address@hidden>
* Philip Balister <address@hidden>
* rear1019 <address@hidden>
* RedStone002
* Ron Economos <address@hidden>
* Ryan Schutt
* Ryan Volz <address@hidden>
* Sebastian Koslowski <address@hidden>
* Sebastian Müller <address@hidden>
* Sylvain Munaut <address@hidden>
* Terry May <address@hidden>
* Thomas Habets <address@hidden>
* Vasil Velichkov <address@hidden>
* Volker Schroer
* wcampbell <address@hidden>
* William Barnhart <address@hidden>


## [3.8.1.0] - 2020-04-08

### Changed

#### Project Scope

- clang-tidy improvements
  - Throw exceptions by value, catch by reference
  - `emplace_back` where applicable
  - `empty()` instead of `vector::size() == 0`
- Use CMake to check for endianness instead of `BOOST_BIG_ENDIAN`

#### gr-fec

- Scipy becomes optional dependency (for polar channel code construction)

#### gr_modtool

- use Boost.UTF instead of cppunit

### Fixed

#### Project Scope

- FindQwt paths
- floatAlmostEqual unittest assert function wrongly passing on sequence
types
- Only require boost unittest when testing is enabled
- FindLOG4CPP typo
- numpy.fft(pack) imports
- several scipy imports that can be done with numpy alone

#### gnuradio-runtime

- block gateway shadowed system port
- Flaky message passing unit test contained timeout (not the test's job)
- ctrlport/`rpcaggregator` & Co: removed storage of references to
scope-lifetime objects
- Sine table generation python was wrong
- `get_tags_in_range` for delay < (end-start)
- premature tag pruning
- release flattened flowgraph after stopping; fixes
restartability/shutdown issues

#### gr-analog

- clipping in FM receiver: remove superfluous gain
- C++ generation for multiple blocks

#### gr-audio

- portaudio source: lock acquisition

#### gr-blocks

- rotator VOLK workaround

#### gr-digital

- `map_bb` buffer overflow
- `map_bb` thread safety
- `additive_scrambler `count based reset

#### gr-fec

- heap corruption in `async_decoder`
- `cc_encoder` was broken for constraint lengths > 8

#### gr-fft

- restore Boost 1.53 compat

#### gr-qtgui

- no longer requiring unnecessary key in `edit_box_msg`

#### gr-uhd

- fixed examples under Py3
- multichannel objects not populating channels

#### gr_modtool

- wrong use of `input` -> `raw_input`
- allow empty argument list
- testing
- check for and deny TSB under Python
- QA addition bugs
- correct path for C++ QA tests

#### GRC

- several issues with YAML files
- nested objects now properly populate namespaces
- comments now included in block bounds calculation
- Wiki documentation link removed from OOT blocks' docs tab
- Dragging connections to auto-hide ports works now
- generated and re-generated several example flowgraphs
- `bokeh_layout` module name
- Revert toggle buttons to text entry for bool block props, allowing GRC
  variables to be used

### Added

#### Project Scope

- Codec2 development branch / future compat
- Boost 1.71 compat
- CI now checks for formatting

#### gnuradio-runtime

- dot graphs now contain message edges
- Python wrapping for blocks' `set_affinity` and `{g,s}et_alias`

#### gr-uhd

- UHD Filter API

#### GRC

- block affinity, buffer sizes available as advanced options for blocks
- testing
- Python snippets (please snippet responsibly!)
- `show_id` flag added to embedded python blocks, Probes
- global option to toggle showing of IDs
- Help "Keyboard Shortcut" entry

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