1 files changed, 80 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.travis/README.md b/.travis/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..5a51b2a7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.travis/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+# Description of CI build configuration
+
+## Variables needed by travis
+
+- GITHUB_TOKEN - GitHub token with push access to repository
+- DOCKER_USERNAME - Username (netdatabot) with write access to docker hub repository
+- DOCKER_PASSWORD - Password to docker hub
+- encrypted_decb6f6387c4_key - Something to do with package releasing (soon to be deprecated)
+- encrypted_decb6f6387c4_iv - Something to do with package releasing (soon to be deprecated)
+- OLD_DOCKER_USERNAME - Username used to push images to firehol/netdata # TODO: remove after deprecating that repo
+- OLD_DOCKER_PASSWORD - Password used to push images to firehol/netdata # TODO: remove after deprecating that repo
+
+## Stages
+
+### Test
+
+Unit tests and coverage tests are executed here. Stage consists of 2 parallel jobs:
+  - C tests - executed every time
+  - coverity test - executed only when pipeline was triggered from cron
+
+### Build
+
+Stage is executed every time and consists of 5 parallel jobs which execute containerized and non-containerized
+installations of netdata. Jobs are run on following operating systems:
+  - OSX
+  - ubuntu 14.04
+  - ubuntu 16.04 (containerized)
+  - CentOS 6 (containerized)
+  - CentOS 7 (containerized)
+  - alpine (containerized)
+
+### Release
+
+This stage is executed only on "master" brach and allows us to create a new tag just looking at git commit message.
+It also has an option to automatically generate changelog based on GitHub labels and sync it with GitHub release.
+For the sake of simplicity and to use travis features this stage cannot be integrated with next stage.
+
+Releases are generated by searching for a keyword in last commit message. Keywords are:
+ - [patch] or [fix] to bump patch number
+ - [minor], [feature] or [feat] to bump minor number
+ - [major] or [breaking change] to bump major number
+All keywords MUST be surrounded with square braces.
+Alternative is to push a tag to master branch.
+
+### Packaging
+
+This stage is executed only on "master" branch and it is separated into 3 jobs:
+  - Update Changelog/Create release
+  - Nightly tarball and self-extractor build
+  - Nightly docker images
+
+##### Update Changelog/Create release
+
+This job is running one script called `releaser.sh`, which is responsible for a couple of things. First of all it 
+automatically updates our CHANGELOG.md file based on GitHub features (mostly labels and pull requests). Apart from 
+that it can also create a new git tag and a github draft release connected to that tag.
+Releases are generated by searching for a keyword in last commit message. Keywords are:
+ - `[netdata patch release]` to bump patch number
+ - `[netdata minor release]` to bump minor number
+ - `[netdata major release]` to bump major number
+All keywords MUST be surrounded with square brackets.
+
+Alternatively new release can be also created by pushing new tag to master branch.
+
+##### Nightly tarball and self-extractor build AND Nightly docker images
+
+As names might suggest those two jobs are responsible for nightly netdata package creation and are run every day (in
+cron). Combined they produce:
+  - docker images
+  - tar.gz archive (soon to be removed)
+  - self-extracting package
+
+Currently "Nightly tarball and self-extractor build" is using old firehol script and it is planed to be replaced with
+new design.
+
+##### Nightly changelog generation
+
+This job is responsible for regenerating changelog every day by executing `generate_changelog.sh` script. This is done
+only once a day due to github rate limiter.
+