Firmware release procedures

Release procedure

Here is a draft of a BIOS release procedure.

Stage one: EC:

• Quanta stores current EC build in a laptop.org GIT tree
  • along with EC changelog and file hashes
• Quanta and OLPC test this version of EC
• Quanta tags for release
• Quanta sends mail to OLPC announcing the release, along with hashes from their build system
• OLPC acknowledges receipt

Stage two: Buildrom:

• Pull EC release from GIT, check hashes
• Update buildrom changelog and tag for release
• Update SPI flash version string in buildrom binary
• Create buildrom SRPM
• Build two flavors of binary RPM for the two RAM variants
  • check with Ray -- do we need separate EC code for A-test and B-test?

Stage three: Testing:

• announce build to BIOS team and Ray, release candidate testing begins
• wmb to test on a 256M board
• install the binary RPMs on Tinderbox machines
• >12 hours of burn-in warm reboot testing on Tinderbox
• cold boot tests
  • we need a cold boot solution; X10 doesn't seem to like the power at OLPC
• After automated tests, send "Who has tested?" mail asking for problem reports
• Release after twelve hours if no problem reports

Stage four: Release:

• Release builds kept in a separate directory
• Update the version number in LB from release candidate to final
  • Could we do this without rebuilding and changing the hashes?
• Announce new build and hashes to devel-boards@ (requires moderation).