[RFC] Proposed location to host the firmware handoff specification.

[Jose Marinho]

Hi,

Arm worked to draft a firmware handoff [1] specification, evolving it based on community feedback.
This activity followed the request of some members of the Arm ecosystem [2].
The spec (still at ALP – feedback/comments welcome!) standardizes how information is propagated between different firmware components during boot.

The spec hopes to remove the reliance on bespoke/platform-specific information handoff mechanisms, thus reducing the code maintenance burden.

The concept of entry types is present in the spec – these are data structure layouts that carry a specific type of data.
New types are meant to be added, following the needs and use-cases of the different communities.
Thus, these communities should be empowered to request new types!

To enable community contributions, the specification must be hosted in a location that is friendly to change requests.

We propose to host the spec in trustedfirmware.org (tf.org).

Tf.org hosts several open-source projects and already has an open governance model.
TF-A, and the associated community, rely on tf.org, and thus are already well equipped to maintain this specification and keep it up to date.
Tf.org is agnostic of any downstream projects that would adopt this specification (e.g. U-boot, EDK2, etc.).

We welcome the views of the communities and want to understand if there are any strong objections to what’s being proposed!
If anyone has objections, we are happy to consider alternatives and associated trade-offs.

Regards

[1] https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0135/latest
[2] Re: [TF-A] Proposal: TF-A to adopt hand-off blocks (HOBs) for information passing between boot stages - TF-A - lists.trustedfirmware.org<https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/archives/list/tf-a@lists.trustedfirmware.org/thread/UZ3H3BVVEIAH6BGFMKFPGIIMS2IZNQKO/#KGATZYDHQWDRPA6ABHQUEB6JJUEGMAMO>