The document outlines Linaro's toolchain release cycle and plans for improvements. It discusses moving to a monthly engineering build cycle for GCC 4.8 and quarterly stable releases for GCC 4.8 and 4.7. It also details hiring more staff for support and backporting and migrating infrastructure to a centralized LAVA and Jenkins system to improve quality, scalability, and validation capabilities.

1. Toolchain Release Cycle
Matthew Gretton-Dann, 1 November 2013

2. connect.linaro.org
Release Schedule
● Monthly Engineering Builds (4.8 only)
● Quarterly Stable Releases (4.7 and 4.8)
New Hires
● Increase Support & Maintenance team from three people to
five
● New heads to focus on backports
Scalability of Infrastructure
● Move away from historic infrastructure
● Use centralized LAVA and Jenkins infrastructure.
Improving Quality

3. connect.linaro.org
Monthly Engineering Builds
● Basic Test & Validation
○ Standard Tool Testsuites
○ Can build and boot a single
zImage kernel
● GCC 4.8 only source &
binary releases.
● Respin only in extremis
○ If a feature is broken but there
is a workaround available we
will not respin.
Release Schedule
Quarterly Stable Releases
● Fuller Test & Validation of Linux
targets
○ Full Benchmarking
○ Can successfully build all of Linaro’s
outputs with no regressions in their
testsuites compared to previous
compiler.
● GCC 4.8 source & binary, GCC
4.7 source only.
● Respins will happen if issues are
found that can be safely fixed.

4. connect.linaro.org
Release Process
Source code branch
Basic
validation
Further
validation
Further
validation
Engineering Build Quality
Stable Release Quality
More validation
Improved quality

5. connect.linaro.org
Support & Maintenance - People
Team led by Rob Savoye:
● 2 Support & Maintenance Heads
● 2 Backporting Heads (one 2013, one 2014).
Team manned by rotation - swapping at Connects.

6. connect.linaro.org
● Initial rack delivered to Cambridge Lab
○ Being Commissioned
● Improvement of tooling on Schedule
○ Plan to turn old build system off by end of year
○ Currently running build systems in parallel to prove functionality
○ Enables us to use many more targets for validation
○ Enables us to use other teams jobs for our validation.
Scalability of Infrastructure

7. connect.linaro.org
Timeline
2013.09 2013.10 2013.11 2013.12 2014.01 2014.02
Move to new infrastructure
Hire two heads to bring Support &
Maintenance team to four
Hire one head to bring Support & Maintenance
team to five
First stable release 2014.01
2014.03

8. More about Linaro: http://www.linaro.org/about/
More about Linaro engineering: http://www.linaro.org/engineering/
How to join: http://www.linaro.org/about/how-to-join
Linaro members: www.linaro.org/members
connect.linaro.org