Overview

Introduction

Shrinkwrap is a tool to simplify the process of building and running firmware on Arm Fixed Virtual Platforms (FVP). It provides a number of configurations that can be used out-of-the-box as well as enabling users to compose and extend them in a manner that can be easily shared and reused. No more shall engineers have to fight with inexplicable fragments of hand-me-down bash code or endlessly search for FVP command line parameters!

Shrinkwrap focuses on building FW stacks and configuring the FVP for a desired set of architecture features so that all components are consistent. Engineers bring their own kernel and rootfs to run on top of this foundation.

Shrinkwrap provides an intuitive command line interface frontend and (by default) a container-based backend so users don’t have to think about the tools required to build or run their configs. Everything is also transparent; users can discover every single invoked command with the --dry-run option.

Configs are defined in YAML and can easily be composed and extended using the built-in layering system.

See Quick Start Guide to get up and running.

Features

  • A simple and intuitive command line interface enables:

    • Acquire and build all required firmware components for a given configuration

    • Package built firmware components for easy distribution

    • Configure and boot the FVP with the packaged firmware components

  • Introspect and use any of the supplied the out-of-box configurations

  • Create your own configurations by composing with and extending others

  • Choose from Docker or Podman runtime backends or run everything natively if you prefer

  • Ensure Reproducible builds with supplied runtime container images

  • Transparently view the generated bash commands for a given config build or run

  • Parallelize builds to make best use of available resources

  • Acquire source from Git remote or point to existing Git local repo

  • Easily switch between all Arm architecture extensions v8.0 - v9.x.

Architecture

Shrinkwrap is implemented in Python and has a command line interface similar to git, with sub-commands that take options. The Python code parses the supplied config(s) to generate shell commands that are executed in a backend runtime. The runtime is specified by the user and may be null (executed natively on the user’s system), or a container runtime such as docker or podman. For the container runtimes, a standard image is provided with all tools preinstalled.

_images/architecture.png

The command line interface has 2 main commands; build and run. The build command takes a configuration (a yaml file) along with an optional overlay which tweaks settings in the config, then builds and packages all the components described within. The package could optionally be distributed for use by others. The run command launches the built package on the FVP, allowing the user to interact with it. The definition of how to run the FVP is contained in the original config that was supplied at build time and is included in the package. The run command allows further tweaking of this runtime config with another optional overlay. The user can also optionally provide values for any runtime variables (RTVARs) that are defined as part of the config. These are typically used to point to the kernel or rootfs that should be used.

Repository Structure

Directory

Description

./config

Shrinkwrap standard config store.

./docker

Scripts to generate docker images used by shrinkwrap’s container runtimes.

./documentation

Source for this documentation.

./shrinkwrap

Shrinkwrap Python tool implementation.

./test

Automated tests.

Repository License

The software is provided under an MIT license (more details in License).

Contributions to the project should follow the same license.

Contributions and Bug Reports

Contributions are accepted under the MIT license. Only submit contributions where you have authored all of the code.

If you’re hitting an error/bug and need help, it’s best to raise an issue in GitLab.

Maintainer(s)