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Paul Beesleyfc9ee362019-03-07 15:47:15 +00001Platform Compatibility Policy
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Soby Mathew02bdbb92018-09-26 11:17:23 +01003
Soby Mathew02bdbb92018-09-26 11:17:23 +01004Introduction
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6
7This document clarifies the project's policy around compatibility for upstream
8platforms.
9
10Platform compatibility policy
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12
13Platform compatibility is mainly affected by changes to Platform APIs (as
14documented in the `Porting Guide`_), driver APIs (like the GICv3 drivers) or
15library interfaces (like xlat_table library). The project will try to maintain
16compatibility for upstream platforms. Due to evolving requirements and
17enhancements, there might be changes affecting platform compatibility which
18means the previous interface needs to be deprecated and a new interface
19introduced to replace it. In case the migration to the new interface is trivial,
20the contributor of the change is expected to make good effort to migrate the
21upstream platforms to the new interface.
22
23The `Release information`_ documents the deprecated interfaces and the intended
24release after which it will be removed. When an interface is deprecated, the
25page must be updated to indicate the release after which the interface will be
26removed. This must be at least 1 full release cycle in future. For non-trivial
27interface changes, a `tf-issue`_ should be posted to notify platforms that they
28should migrate away from the deprecated interfaces. Platforms are expected to
29migrate before the removal of the deprecated interface.
30
31--------------
32
33*Copyright (c) 2018, Arm Limited and Contributors. All rights reserved.*
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Paul Beesleyea225122019-02-11 17:54:45 +000035.. _Porting Guide: ../getting_started/porting-guide.rst
Paul Beesley2437ddc2019-02-08 16:43:05 +000036.. _Release information: https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware/wiki/TF-A-Release-information#removal-of-deprecated-interfaces
Soby Mathewf1e6c492018-10-02 14:01:03 +010037.. _tf-issue: https://github.com/ARM-software/tf-issues/issues