Automated Pre-OS (Firmware) Build and Continuous Integration

Abstract

An Integrated Firmware Image consists of various system firmware blobs with multiple feature configuration per silicon architecture.There are multiple issues that need to be addressed such as automating the build and sanity verification, differenti- ating between verified and custom images, identifying embedded software packages used and generating multiple configurations once at an early stage of the program cadence. This thesis aims to build an automated clean integrated image, which goes through the various stage of image verification (static analysis), pre-packing, build, authentication, and release with rollback feature. We cover each of these automated build infrastructure and test suite developed to make it seamless. Each stage has pre-defined tasks; image verification has to verify payload size, signature, updating intermediate configuration files; pre-packing has to re-create the previous build for incremental and delta build setup, updating all intermediate configuration files, pattern matching for JSON files that dictate each binary attributes, creating version information binary table. Once all the configuration details are set, binaries are copied in a appropriate location, the build will be triggered to generate various different configurations for silicon. This build automation is fully implemented and used for all active programs. Other enhancements such as verification of an image whether its a release or custom build is also the part of test suite post build. The generated images through these automated build infrastructure are then verified and debugged in the shell environment once the platform is powered up with all the configuration that is enabled for the silicon. Hence, to ease the verification analysis in the process and to improvise build environment, automation tool suite is used.