Instead of passing MACHINE from stage to stage or loading it from
testdata.json, use the original value from the Jinja2 loop and set it
directly for each job where it is used.

Instead of passing these variables from stage to stage or regenerating
their values in later stages, use the ones set in the build-version job
at all places.

The RELEASE_NAME variable can be set directly now, so there's no need to
have a dedicated RELEASE_SUFFIX anymore. A previous configuration like

  RELEASE_SUFFIX: "-custom"

can now be achieved using:

  RELEASE_NAME: "Yocto-${RELEASE_VERSION}-custom"

Disable it locally instead, so that
 1. new code additions are always checked, and
 2. we can refactor one function at a time to make the check pass.

The old printf-style string formatting syntax using '%' is not
recommended anymore. See for reference:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting
https://docs.sourcery.ai/Reference/Python/Default-Rules/replace-interpolation-with-fstring/

Python 3.6 introduced f-strings as a better alternative:
https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#f-strings

Consequently switch to this new syntax for all strings.

A dictionary comprehension can create the dictionary on one line,
cutting out the clutter of declaring an empty dict and then adding
items.

See for reference:
https://docs.sourcery.ai/Reference/Python/Default-Rules/dict-comprehension/

Rename all stages to uppercase on this occasion, since we're adding
stages with names containing multiple words.

Customer specific manifest projects can now set the RELEASE_SUFFIX
variable, which then gets appended to the deployment folder names.

- Make output-dir an argument that can be passed multiple times instead
  of hard-coding two dirs with certain meanings.
- Remove LOCALDIR variable from package.env, because it is not used
  anywhere (only occurence was job class ".uploadsdkftp" which wasn't
  used anywhere either).

Improve readability of package_release.py and its submodule
generate_release_metadata.py.

- Add describing comments throughout the file.
- Remove duplicate code from functions. Simplify them, so that they do
  what their names say (and nothing more).
- Rename variables and function arguments to make their purpose clearer.
- Harmonize variable names with their corresponding command line arguments.
- Add pydoc for functions.
- Add type declarations to function arguments.
- Generate MD5 and metadata files in the source directories so that they
  can be copied along with the rest of the files.

BCS 746-000808

BCS 746-000637

Added additional log output for sdk upload.

Remove alphaplan_fwr debug code and run black and pylint.

To improve the readability of the package_release.py script.

BCS 746-000734

Now md5sums.txt can be assembled from different copy processes.
The build md5sums file is not overwritten by the license copy process
anymore.

BCS 746-000637 746-000734

The alphaplan FWR generation is now separated to make the manifest gitlab-ci
file more easy to understand and reduce the complexity of the
package_release file.

BCS 746-000637

The markdown2 Python module was added to the package_release.py script,
which resulted in a failed SDK deployment because it was missing from
the build container. Updated ci-images to the latest revision, in which
the module was added to the build container.
Modified package_release.py to skip the metadata generation when
deploying the SDK.

BCS 746-000727

BCS 746-000669

BCS 746-000303

BCS 746-000303

BCS DevOps-000032

BCS DevOps-000032

Fix pylint errors introduced with new pylint version:
* unspecified-encoding: explicitly set encoding when opening a file
* assigning-non-slot: use "set_reference()" function instead of assigning
  a value to the "reference" attribute
* unused-variable: remove "e" variable on exceptions when not referenced

BCS DevOps-000023 DevOps-000024

alphaplan_fwr.py: Creates alphaplan software packages for the build
release artifacts. According to the release, all relevant artifacts are
collected in a list structure and the corresponding aphaplan
information are added for each artifact (attributes, md5sum, path, etc.).
The list is attached to major software package structure. This structure
is written in a json file for documentation. Afterwards the structure is
send to an AlphaPlan webservice that creates the FWR articles.
alphaplan_keys.py: Generates a dictionary which contains all AlphaPlan
specific information for the artifacts. Flag classes are used to define
unique keys for the dictionary accesses.

The paths have been hardcoded inside the script before. To
allow reuse in different situations, the hardcoded paths are removed
and options are added instead.

To upload the sdk the local deployment on build host is needed as it is
too big for the uploads.

Move copy functionality to extra function. It also generates md5sum.txt
from the source file's md5sums.
Copy locally (host system) and as gitlab artifact.

Add option to copy doc files ( all .md in given folder).

BCS 746-000262

The sdk is split into 512M parts to be handled as gitlab artefact.
All sdk steps are optional for now.

BCS 746-000262

Don't rename the release artifacts, just copy to a versioned folder.
The list of files to copy is taken from variables set in yocto
DISTRO_ARTIFACTS and DISTRO_IMAGES.
Images are linked, all other files are copied.

BCS 746-000273

Don't rename the release artifacts, just copy to a versioned folder.
The list of files to copy is taken from variables set in yocto
DISTRO_ARTIFACTS and DISTRO_IMAGES.
Images are linked, all other files are copied.

BCS 746-000273