Platform Ports Policy
=====================

This document clarifies a couple of policy points around platform ports
management.

Platform compatibility policy
-----------------------------

Platform compatibility is mainly affected by changes to Platform APIs (as
documented in the :ref:`Porting Guide`), driver APIs (like the GICv3 drivers) or
library interfaces (like xlat_table library). The project will try to maintain
compatibility for upstream platforms.

Due to evolving requirements and enhancements, there might be changes affecting
platform compatibility, which means the previous interface needs to be deprecated
and a new interface introduced to replace it. In case the migration to the new
interface is trivial, the contributor of the change is expected to make good
effort to migrate the upstream platforms to the new interface.

The project will generally not take into account downstream platforms. If those
are affected by a deprecation / removal decision, we encourage their maintainers
to upstream their platform code or copy the latest version of the code being
deprecated into their downstream tree.

The deprecated interfaces are listed inside :ref:`Release Processes` as well as
the release after which each one will be removed. When an interface is
deprecated, the page must be updated to indicate the release after which the
interface will be removed. This must be at least 1 full release cycle in future.
For non-trivial interface changes, an email should be sent out to the `TF-A
public mailing list`_ to notify platforms that they should migrate away from the
deprecated interfaces. Platforms are expected to migrate before the removal of
the deprecated interface.

Deprecation policy
------------------

If a platform, driver or library interface is no longer maintained, it is best
to deprecate it to keep the projects' source tree clean and healthy. Deprecation
can be a 1-stage or 2-stage process (up to the maintainers).

 - *2-stage*: The source code can be kept in the repository for a cooling off
   period before deleting it (typically 2 release cycles). In this case, we keep
   track of the *Deprecated* version separately from the *Deleted* version.

 - *1-stage*: The source code can be deleted straight away. In this case, both
   versions are the same.

The :ref:`Platform Ports` page provides a list of all deprecated/deleted
platform ports (or soon to be) to this day.

--------------

*Copyright (c) 2018-2023, Arm Limited and Contributors. All rights reserved.*

.. _TF-A public mailing list: https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman3/lists/tf-a.lists.trustedfirmware.org/