Metal3 project-infra is a testing infrastructure configuration that operates a CI cluster running Prow and Jenkins to automate testing and GitHub workflows for the Metal3 project.
The infrastructure solves the problem of coordinating and executing diverse testing workloads by splitting CI responsibilities between two specialized systems. Prow runs on a Kubernetes cluster and handles lightweight jobs such as linting, unit tests, builds, and manifest checks as pods, while also coordinating all jobs and managing automatic PR merging through Tide once required checks pass and necessary labels are applied. Jenkins executes heavier workloads that Prow triggers but does not run itself, including end-to-end, integration, conformance, and upgrade test suites, provisioning either cloud VMs or dispatching to persistent physical hardware in a bare-metal lab for appropriate jobs.
Teams maintaining Metal3 or similar projects requiring both rapid feedback on code quality and comprehensive hardware-level testing should consider this infrastructure. The split architecture suits projects where some validation must run quickly in containers while other validation demands real hardware or extended execution time. Job definitions for the Jenkins side are maintained separately in a Nordix Gerrit repository using JJB YAML format, with pipeline scripts stored in this repository's jenkins/jobs directory, allowing centralized management of CI configuration across multiple systems.
The project maintains active configuration and tooling for both Prow and Jenkins subsystems, with documented architecture decisions and clear separation of concerns between lightweight and heavyweight testing stages. The infrastructure includes automation for PR merging through Tide, reducing manual overhead in the review process. Documentation covers the CI architecture overview and provides references to both Prow and Jenkins configuration details, enabling operators to understand and modify the testing pipeline.
