Skip to content

Support-tier vocabulary: release pages use five values, the Board Support Rules define four different ones #995

Description

@igorpecovnik

Blocking a homepage cleanup: the homepage explains three support tiers, generated release pages emit five different labels, and User-Guide_Board-Support-Rules.md — the source of truth — defines a fourth set. A reader who lands on /releases/26.8/ and sees

panther-x2: Standard support → EOS

has no way to map that onto the three buttons the homepage explains.

I stopped rather than invent definitions, per the brief. This needs a human decision before the homepage section can be rewritten.

Every distinct value found in generated release pages

From the "Board status changes" section of docs/releases/*.md (25.2 → 26.8). The generator (scripts/generate-release-doc.py in armbian/armbian.github.io) derives these from the config/boards/<board>.<ext> file extension in armbian/build:

Label rendered config/boards extension Boards on that extension today (armbian/build@79a3cc4) Defined in Board Support Rules?
Standard support .conf 142 ✅ Yes — "Standard Support"
CSC .csc 216 ⚠️ Only historically — named as a former status folded into "Community maintained"
EOS .eos 31 ⚠️ Only historically — same sentence
WIP .wip 0 ⚠️ Indirectly — the page calls this tier "Staging" and mentions WIP only in prose
TV box .tvb 14 Not defined anywhere. The FAQ discusses TV boxes, but not as a support tier

The three vocabularies, side by side

Homepage (/) Board Support Rules Generated release pages
Platinum Support Platinum Support (never appears)
Standard Support Standard Support Standard support
Community maintained Community maintained CSC, EOS
(absent) Staging WIP
(absent) (absent) TV box

What needs deciding

  1. TV box / .tvb has no definition at all. Is it a support tier, or a hardware category that happens to share the extension slot? Either it gets a section in the Board Support Rules, or the release generator should stop rendering it as a tier.
  2. CSC and EOS are live values, not historical ones. The Rules page says "Community maintained ... represents combined former CSC ... and EOS", but armbian/build still has 216 .csc and 31 .eos board files and the generator still emits both labels distinctly. Either the Rules page is out of date, or the generator should collapse both to "Community maintained".
  3. WIP vs Staging. Same tier, two names. Pick one for both places.
  4. Platinum Support appears on the homepage and in the Rules but has no config/boards extension, so it can never show up in a release page. Worth saying so explicitly on the homepage.

Once decided

The homepage "Which hardware is supported?" section should be updated to match the Rules page and cross-link to it, so the release pages' vocabulary is reachable from the tier explanation. That is a small follow-up PR — it just needs the answers above first.

/cc @armbian/documentation

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions