Hi All,

After the TF-A Tech-forum on 11th February 2021 (https://www.trustedfirmware.org/meetings/tf-a-technical-forum/) introducing the TF-A OpenCI I wanted to follow up with a posting on how we want to incorporate this new CI workflow into the TF-A project environment and who will have the ability to instigate OpenCI runs for the project.

Some guidelines we are looking to follow are:

* Be consistent across all Trustedfirmware.org hosted projects (TF-A, TF-M, Hafnium etc) * Be as open as possible to allow project contributors access to the CI. * Protect backend server resources from security attacks. * Be open to tune the workflow process as needs demand.

As mentioned in the Tech-forum session the main day to day developer interface with the OpenCI is through Gerrit reviews with the CI+1/CI+2 gerrit labels for patches under review that start two levels of CI coverage. There is also a daily CI run on the integration branch that is started automatically. OpenCI runs for gerrit patch reviews are shown in the patch comments as links into https://ci.trustedfirmware.org/view/TF-A/ where all the Jenkin jobs including the daily build can be found.

In addition there is the occasional need to re-trigger CI jobs directly in the Jenkins UI shown above. This can occur if there is an intermittent failure in the CI infrastructure or due to some other cause however its hoped this is only needed to be used rarely and most contributors will not need to use this.

The initial plan is allow OpenCI invocation (through Gerrit and Jenkins) to all the TF-A maintainers and Code Owners listed in https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git/tree/docs/about/... as a list of known project contributors. This list can be extended over time with other individuals nominated by anybody on the initial list.

The OpenCI will become the primary and only CI for setting the Gerrit verified label for patches under review. The existing ArmCI will become advisory and triggered separately and will not directly influence the Gerrit verified label for patches under review. The ArmCI will be maintained in parallel for those areas not yet migrated to the OpenCI and will be disabled once the next phases of the OpenCI development complete. Any CI results from the ArmCI will be communicated in patch review comments from Arm contributors as required.

Project documentation will be updated to incorporate OpenCI usage and a further Tech-forum will be held to go through the CI usage in more detail once the OpenCI is ready to take over as the primary TF-A CI. This is expected and hoping to take place in the next week or two as the final OpenCI deployment issues are resolved but exactly when will be communicated to this list once we have a firm date.

Thanks

Joanna