Release 0.9.4 rc.1

Release 0.9.4-rc.1

Release: 0.9.4
Build: 0.9.4-rc.1
Status: first release candidate

0.9.4-rc.1 promotes the hardware-qualified dev.16 runtime without a new functional change. It freezes the 0.9.4 feature set, consolidates qualification evidence and corrects stale documentation/version references.

Qualification summary

• Waveshare ESP32-S3-RGB-Matrix native 64x64 plus logical 16x16/32x32 automatic scaling: PASS.
• Waveshare PSRAM transient staging, persistent source cache and one-item prefetch: PASS.
• MatrixPortal S3 native 64x64, 256 KiB transient staging / 1 MiB reserve: PASS.
• MatrixPortal 384 KiB persistent cache / 256 KiB entry / 8 metadata entries: PASS.
• MatrixPortal one-item / 250 ms prefetch: PASS.
• MatrixPortal mixed Carousel/Preset lifecycle soak: PASS; eviction and invalidation exercised, gifStage fallback:0, gifPrefetch fail:0, PSRAM invariants valid.
• ESP32-C3 and classic ESP32 qualified baselines are unchanged.

Release freeze

Only regression, documentation, packaging and build-profile fixes belong in the 0.9.4 release-candidate cycle. Progressive Carousel/Preset item pipelining is deferred to a later release and follows the design rule early display, late atomic commit.