Format mismatch of ManufacturingDate element in Factory partition (CON-1893)

[avzasorin-sd]

Describe the bug

esp-matter has implementation of DeviceInstanceInfoProvider which uses Factory Partition to fill some attributes of BasicInformation cluster.
The problematic atttibute is ManufacturingDate, which must be formatted, accodring to Matter specification, as a string of 8...16 characters, starting with YYYYMMDD block which represents the manufacturing date.

Corresponding "mfg-date" information element is embedded into factory partition by using esp-matter-mfg-tool. Usage guides of esp-matter-mfg-tool state that the format for --mfg-date argument is "YYYY-MM-DD", see https://github.com/espressif/esp-matter/blob/main/docs/en/production.rst

But in fact esp-matter-mfg-tool expects "YYYYMMDD" or "YYYYMMDDxxxxxxxx" format, and issues an error message if "YYYY-MM-DD" format is used:

[ERROR] - First 8 bytes should be in ISO 8601 format YYYYMMDD (e.g., 20250416), last 8 can be anything specific to the manufacturer

Default implementation of GenericDeviceInstanceInfoProvider::GetManufacturingDate() from CHIP SDK requires this "mfg-date" configuration element to be formatted as "YYYY-MM-DD" string. Current implementation of esp-matter SDK calls this default implementation for ManufacturingDate attribute. It fails, because data is not formatted as expected.

Summary of current problems:

1. Manual for esp-matter-mfg-tool tool and usage examples contradicts with actual format of data allowed for --mfg-date argument;
2. Value of ManufacturingDate attribute cannot be configured by using Factory Partition: esp-matter-mfg-tool stores it in a format which is not recognised by current implementation of DeviceInstanceInfoProvider;
3. There is no possible way to insert additional information into ManufacturingDate attribute (8 vendor defined characters as per Matter specification): though it can be stored in factory partition using esp-matter-mfg-tool, it is not recognised by GenericDeviceInstanceInfoProvider parser.

Environment

ESP-Matter Commit Id: b8f6582
ESP-IDF Commit Id: 4c2820d377d1375e787bcef612f0c32c1427d183
SoC (eg: ESP32 or ESP32-C3): ESP32-C3

Any additional details

[pimpalemahesh]

@avzasorin-sd Thanks for the reporting the issue!

As per the specification, the data format is YYYYMMDD, which is why it is implemented that way in the mfg-tool. However, the usage example shows it as YYYY-MM-DD, which makes it confusing.

The current implementation of the DeviceInstanceInfoProvider only understands the YYYY-MM-DD format. Additionally, it does not yet support vendor-specific additional information.

We are working on resolving these issues!