High-level overview

In this section, you can find a high-level overview of protocol development prior to the introduction of the CI/CD pipeline, compared to the new way of working.

Consider for example the development of a protocol. Previously, System Developers put new versions of a protocol on https://svn.skyline.be, where the protocol was an XML file.

Previous workflow: Protocol published on SVN by developer

With the introduction of the CI/CD pipeline, Visual Studio solutions are now used instead of XML files (see e.g. Developing using DIS).

Every Visual Studio solution is stored in its own Git repository. The repository has different release branches defined for the different ranges (e.g. 1.0.0.X) and each protocol version is a tag in the Git repository (e.g. 1.0.0.1, 1.0.0.2, etc.). Note that this is different from the previous approach on SVN, where every version of a protocol was provided as a separate file.

These Git repositories are hosted by Gerrit Code Review, a software package used for code reviewing, managing and serving Git repositories, etc. (https://gerrit.skyline.be). For each push to a Git repository hosted by Gerrit, the CI/CD pipeline automatically triggers and executes multiple steps such as building the solution, executing unit tests, performing code analysis, running the DIS validator and publishing a new version of the protocol on SVN if needed.

System Developers therefore no longer put new versions of protocols, Automation scripts, etc. on SVN. Instead, a new version is created by creating a tag in the Git repository. The CI/CD pipeline then automatically publishes the new version on SVN.

New workflow: Protocol published on Git by developer and on SVN by CI/CD pipeline