Specification Teams under the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process MUST produce a Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) that delivers on the promise of enabling multiple compatible implementations.
This document defines:
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Materials a TCK MUST possess to be considered suitable for delivering portability
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Process for challenging tests and how these challenges are resolved
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Means of excluding released TCK tests from certification requirements
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Policy on improving TCK tests for released specifications
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Process for self-certification
Artifacts:
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Specification contributors MUST produce the team licensed (EPL, Apache, etc.) version for distribution to Maven Central or other open source channels, usable for automated, non-official testing, and implementation. No compatibility claims can be made on the basis of this TCK.
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Specification contributors MUST produce a final candidate binary that includes the (EFTL) license. The MicroProfile Specification Committee will sign and promote the Specification’s TCK binary for distribution via Eclipse infrastructure on final approval. This is the TCK binary usable for self-certification when one desires to make a claim of compatibility.
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The TCK binaries MUST contain a top-level README document outlining
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Software requirements
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Installation and configuration
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How to run the tests
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Where to file challenges
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TCK specific rules not covered in this process guide
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We recommend that the TCK documentation include
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URLs for the issue trackers to file certification requests, bug reports, etc.
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A statement that the Certification of Compatibility process must be followed before a claim of compatibility can be made.
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TCK binaries MAY contain
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Test coverage document
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Test assertion document
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Release available via a release on specification’s GitHub project releases page(or equivalent)
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Final releases under the EFTL MUST be hosted on download.eclipse.org
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Specifications will submit the EFTL proposed final binary of the TCK for approval to the Specification Committee.
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The Specification Committee will vote to approve or reject the TCK binary.
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Approved binaries will be signed with the GPG key of the MicroProfile Specification Committee, and then published on download.eclipse.org along with the digital signature of the SHA-256 hash of the final binary, and the SHA-256 hash of the binary as the fingerprint of the TCK.
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Consumers can use the GPG key of the MicroProfile Specification Committee to verify the authenticity of that or any TCK binary.
Specifications are the sole source of truth and considered overruling to the TCK in all senses. In the course of implementing a specification and attempting to pass the TCK, implementations may come to the conclusion that one or more tests or assertions do not conform to the specification, and therefore MUST be excluded from the certification requirements.
Requests for tests to be excluded are referred to as Challenges. This section identifies who can make challenges to the TCK, what challenges to the TCK may be submitted, how these challenges are submitted, how and to whom challenges are addressed.
Any implementor may submit a challenge to one or more tests in the TCK as it relates to their implementation. Implementor means the entity as a whole in charge of producing the final certified release. Challenges filed MUST represent the consensus of that entity.
Any test case (e.g., test class, \@Test method), test case configuration (e.g., deployment descriptor), test beans, annotations, and other resources considered part of the TCK may be challenged.
The following scenarios are considered in scope for test challenges:
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Claims that a test assertion conflicts with the specification.
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Claims that a test asserts requirements over and above that of the specification.
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Claims that an assertion of the specification is not sufficiently implementable.
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Claims that a test is not portable or depends on a particular implementation.
The following scenarios are considered out of scope for test challenges and will be immediately closed if filed:
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Challenging an implementation’s claim of passing a test. Certification is an honor system and these issues MUST be raised directly with the implementation.
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Challenging the usefulness of a specification requirement. The challenge process cannot be used to bypass the specification process and raise in question the need or relevance of a specification requirement.
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Claims the TCK is inadequate or missing assertions required by the specification. See the Improvement section, which is outside the scope of test challenges.
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Challenges that do not represent a consensus of the implementing community will be closed. If agreement is later reached by the implementing community, the issue can be reopened. The test challenge process is not the place for implementations to initiate their own internal discussions.
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Challenges to tests that are already excluded for any reason.
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Challenges that an excluded test should not have been excluded and SHOULD be re-added MUST be opened as a new enhancement request
Challenges MUST be filed via the specification’s Github issue tracker
using the label challenge and include the following information:
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The relevant specification version and section number(s)
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The coordinates of the challenged test(s)
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The exact TCK version
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The implementation being tested, including name and company
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A full description of why the test is invalid and what the correct behavior is believed to be
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Any supporting material; debug logs, test output, test logs, run scripts, etc.
Challenges can be resolved after a consensus of the specification contributors is reached or attempts to gain consensus fails. Specification contributors may exercise lazy consensus, voting or any practice that follows the principles of Eclipse Foundation Development Process.
The failure to resolve a Challenge might prevent an implementation from going to market; Challenges SHOULD be given a high priority by the specification contributors and resolved in a timely manner. Two weeks or less SHOULD be considered the ideal period of time to resolve a challenge. Challenges may go longer as needed, but as a rule SHOULD avoid months.
If consensus cannot be reached by the specification contributors for a prolonged period of time, the default recommendation is to exclude the tests and address the dispute in a future revision of the specification.
A consensus that a test produces invalid results will result in the
exclusion of that test from certification requirements, and an immediate
update and release of an official distribution of the TCK including the
new exclude list. The associated challenge issue MUST be closed with
an accepted label to indicate it has been resolved.
When a challenge issue is rejected, it MUST be closed with a label of
invalid to indicate it has been rejected. The appeal process for
challenges rejected on technical terms is outlined in Escalation Appeal.
If, however, an implementer feels the TCK challenge process was not
followed, an appeal issue MUST be filed with the specification’s
issue tracker using the label challenge-appeal. A contributor MUST
escalate the issue with the MicroProfile Specification Committee via email
(<microprofile-wg@eclipse.org>). The committee will evaluate the matter
purely in terms of due process. If the appeal is accepted, the original
TCK challenge issue will be reopened and a label of appealed-challenge
added, along with a discussion of the appeal decision, and the
challenge-appeal issue will be closed. If the appeal is rejected, the
challenge-appeal issue MUST be closed with a label of invalid.
Excludes MUST be included in the specification’s TCK release in a format that is compatible with the testing framework in use so that as the excludes are updated, the affected tests are automatically removed from the test suite.
Requests for improvement to tests MUST simply be created as issues with
a label of enhancement in the specification’s TCK issue
tracker.
MicroProfile is a self-certification ecosystem. If you wish to have your implementation listed on the official (microprofile.io) implementations page for the given specification, a certification request as defined in this section is required.
Requests to be acknowledged as a certified implementation for umbrella releases MUST be filed
under the github repo (microprofile) via the specification’s issue tracker using the label
certification. Alternatively, if a certified implementation wants to only certify a particular specification release, the request
must be filed under the corresponding github repo such as (Fault Tolerance) for certifying a particular release of MicroProfile Fault Tolerance.
The request must include the following information:
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Statement of Acceptance of the terms of the EFTL
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Product Name, Version and download URL (if applicable)
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Specification Name, Version and download URL
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Final TCK Version, digital SHA-256 fingerprint and download URL
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Implementation runtime Version(s) tested
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Public URL of TCK Results Summary
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Any Additional Specification Certification Requirements
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Java runtime used to run the implementation
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Summary of the information for the certification environment, operating system, cloud, …
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A statement attesting that all TCK requirements have been met, including any compatibility rules
Specifications may require additional items for a Certification Request as defined in their corresponding TCK Documentation under the section labeled "Additional Certification Requirements".
Examples of such additional requirements may include:
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Name and version of Compatible Implementation used for interoperability tests
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Name and version of Databases used for persistence tests
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Name and version of NoSQL implementations used in persistence tests
While certification is on your honor, the community MUST be able to see your test results summary. At a minimum a results summary MUST:
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Be publicly visible with no password protection or sign-up
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Include a Summary Page containing:
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All information in the above Certification Request
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The Total number of tests run and passed.
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An optional "Test List Page" showing all tests run may be linked from the Summary Page. The Summary Page URL is the URL that MUST be included in any Certification Requests.
The following are explicitly not requirements:
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The Ability for the public to run the tests themselves
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Full log output of the TCK
Implementors may supply this information and provide support for how to run a TCK against their implementation, but it is not required.
Approval that the TCK requirements have been met is a prerequisite for getting the corresponding runtime listed as a complible implementation of a particular MicroProfile platform release. The required approval processes is:
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Approval by lazy consensus after a period of two weeks (14 days) or
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Approval by at least two of the MicroProfile committers as soon as it happens. The committers should not work for the same company where the certification requester is associated with.
All specification contributors are encouraged to review the request and associated supporting materials. Reviewers of a certification request MUST carefully check the validity of all required data, in particular:
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the data is complete
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the number of tests passed is consistent with the first implementation used to validate the TCK
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TCK version and digital fingerprint match.
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test results are public and do not require special signup or viewing steps
Any committer on the specification may vote against the certification request on the basis that the clearly defined requirements of the TCK process have not been met. This means that if there is a (-1) vote, lazy consensus is no longer an option and a majority vote MUST take place.
Certification requests that are reviewed and found to meet the
requirements will be marked accepted by closing an issue with an
accepted label. A pointer/link to the issue MUST then be emailed to
tck@eclipse.org by the certification requestor, as required by the
Eclipse Foundation Technology Compatibility Kit License.
Certification requests that are reviewed and found to NOT meet the
requirements will be marked as such by closing an issue with an
invalid label along with the requirements that were not met. A new
certification issue MUST be created with the updated requirements to
attempt the certification request again.
If there is a concern that a TCK process issue has not been resolved satisfactorily, the Eclipse Development Process Grievance Handling procedure SHOULD be followed to escalate the resolution. Note that this is not a mechanism to attempt to handle implementation specific issues.