By following a CI/CD process customers will have access to new releases every few weeks. This will allow teams to begin to build their own continuous integration and delivery systems for their customers, get a head start on building new platforms sooner, and enjoy similar benefits of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) management, technical support, and quality typically found in annual and Long Term Support (LTS) releases.
“In the 5G era, as companies are racing to innovate, they have a greater need for frequent software updates and nonstop security monitoring. Many update their software on a weekly basis, and some are updating applications every day or even hourly,” said Michel Genard, vice president of product, Wind River. “Companies want a continuous stream of updated code and features from a trusted source. On a daily basis, Wind River tests and validates a variety of use cases relevant across industries, with thousands of test cases every night. This testing, coupled with constant feedback and active engagement from customers, is designed to ensure high levels of quality for our deliverables.”
Using CI/CD practices to advance its own DevOps culture and deliver high-quality software, Wind River is providing continuous delivery that enables customers to integrate Wind River Linux into their continuous integration processes. The development and maintenance processes for Wind River releases are certified for quality under ISO 9001:2015. Wind River is the first company to ever be OpenChain conformant, which means that certification for open source license compliance and usage allows users to trust the open source from which software solutions are built.
CI/CD best practices contribute to a culture of continuous improvement by enabling teams to adopt, adapt, and implement small changes rapidly and reliably. As connectivity rises across sectors, new data and applications are under constant change, and companies must adjust their processes in order to incorporate, validate, and deliver new features and applications.
According to Wind River, embedded system developers who are interested in CI/CD but do not yet have the infrastructure for that development model will be able to get support from the company. Customers who currently develop software on a fixed version of the Linux kernel due to tight restrictions around certifications, such as those creating medical systems, can continue to work with Wind River Linux LTS yearly releases.
More common in the enterprise realm, container usage is typically a challenge in the embedded space, due to the need for a highly optimised software stack. Existing frameworks often lack the right design or support for mission-critical industries that employ embedded devices with extremely long lifecycles that require lighter-weight software with a smaller footprint. Wind River Linux already includes pre-built containers, tools, and documentation and support for frameworks such as Docker and Kubernetes, which can help developers deploy applications across the intelligent edge using cloud-native methods. Wind River Linux has added the capability to asynchronously update containers and the base operating system (OS) separately. When running multiple applications, with each in its own container, on top of Wind River Linux, these containerised applications can be updated without having to update or reboot the host OS.
Linux tools often require special adaptations for embedded software development. Wind River is now providing new commercial tooling options for Linux application developers to enable their use of the latest open source innovations.
A new version of the Eclipse-based Wind River Workbench for Linux LTS provides an application development environment for build, debug, and system analysis tools.
Wind River also has teamed with partners such as Percepio AB to ensure that there is both an open source and a commercial ecosystem of tools that address the needs of Wind River Linux developers. The Percepio Tracealyzer trace visualization tool provides a large number of high-level views to make it easier to spot anomalies in program execution and to trace them to the root cause without requiring a great deal of Linux kernel expertise.
Wind River is providing a Linux subscription in order to provide long term support and maintenance, including security updates, for the upstream Wind River Linux content.
Wind River's security team is constantly monitoring the CVE database, security notifications from U.S. government agencies and organisations such as NIST and US CERT, and public and private security mailing lists. By leveraging commercial grade ISO 9001:2015–certified Wind River Linux, support, and services, teams are able to significantly reduce production and maintenance costs and accelerate development cycles in comparison to in-house efforts.
The latest version of Wind River Linux also includes a robust collection of full-featured board support packages (BSPs).
