Unbundle FW Artifacts/Versions from Core/Backend Deployment via Firmware "Object" e2e

[zhaozhongn]

The concept of firmware object describes the metadata about firmware such as what hardware it is for, how to get binary, how to update, etc. It involves the following work.

• REST -> Flow -> Core -> Backend e2e path with a passing of JSONstring representing SOT-based metadata as firmware object
• For compatibility, existing backend (Core compute, NSM, PSM) still currently use the string as a "version tag"
• Core compute FW update logic needs to be refactored to parse and down JSONstring, at least for ancillary machines
• REST/CLI need to be able to pick out the "version" string in a SOT JSON as a shorthand for it to increase readability
• NICo config need to specify desired SOT JSON url for each supported HW model

[ajf]

@zhaozhongn I updated the title, but I think this is more internal changes, not a roadmap item. Is it a sub-task of something else? What's the user-visible feature here?

[zhaozhongn]

@ajf It is actually very user-visible. The core issue here is to transit from Core's existing bundle-FW-with-deployment-and-have-fixed-desired-version approach to an API-specify FW metadata (which includes download URL) and download at update time approach. It is an e2e effort. At REST level, FW update API supports FW JSON metadata. When it reaches backend such as RMS, backend parse the JSON, check the hardware compatibility, and download the bundle. Some of the work is already ongoing but the completion will be in milestone 2.1