I am quiet new to Adaptive Autosar, could someone explain what Manifest does exactly? And I noticed in each folder (Platform) there is a manifest.json.
But my understanding from Autosar documents was that Manifest is supposed to be an arxml file. So does Execution Manager in the platform need this .json file to parse ? How are these .json files created and how does it fit into the Adaptive Autosar platform.
And what exact information is there inside these .json and .arxml files?
On
The term Manifest is used for formal specification of configuration. Here is the [link][1] to official specification for Adaptive AUTOSAR.
.arxml format is standardized by AUTOSAR consortium. However that does not mean in the actual machine .arxml file is uploaded and parsed by the software. Every vendor has freedom to define and use custom format of up-loadable file. It could be json as in your case. but really depends on vendor stack (Vector/Elektrobit/ETAS etc..).
Modelling done is captured and maintained (software configuration management like git) in form of ARXML files. The vendor specific tool may convert set of arxml files (not single, but a set of files which make sense) to up-loadable format like json, which are then placed in target machine or ECU are used by the software.
Bottom line :
arxml is used to define or specify configuration
formats like json is derived from set of arxml files and are actually used in the machine.
[1]: https://www.autosar.org/fileadmin/user_upload/standards/adaptive/17-03/AUTOSAR_TPS_ManifestSpecification.pdf
The standardized manifest content is formalized in the AUTOSAR XML Schema. Therefore, it is possible to create an ARXML model that covers the standardized manifest content.
However, stack vendors are free to convert the standardized ARXML content plus vendor-specific extensions into any format for the configuration on device.
JSON just turns out to be quite popular, but (as mentioned before) there is no actual limitation to JSON in place.