The Yocto Project - An Overview - hands-on Training Course

Course Outline

Introduction

• History of Unix/Linux, licenses, standards, working with free software, finding resources, exploring codebases, and the Unix philosophy.

Embedded Specifics

• Comparison of Linux on desktops versus embedded systems, cross-compilation and native toolchains, pre-built toolchains, build systems, and C libraries.

Evaluation Board

• Boot process overview and practical observation of the boot sequence.

Yocto Introduction

• Definition and purpose of the Yocto Project (YP), introduction to Poky, BitBake, OE-Core, and Metadata.

The YP Autobuilder

• Overview of the YP Autobuilder and usage of Docker containers (pulling and launching).

The YP Workflow

• Introduction
• Workflow overview and OpenEmbedded architecture
• Configuration (User, Metadata, Machine, Distribution Policy)
• Source management
• Build process (Source fetching, Patching, Configure/Compile/Install, Pseudo, Recipe examples, Output analysis/Packaging, Image Generation, SDK Generation)
• Customizing Images (Introduction, local.conf, IMAGE_FEATURES, custom .bb files, custom packagegroups)

BitBake

• History
• Syntax
• Debugging techniques (debug levels, locating recipes/images/packagegroups, BitBake environment/tasks/logging, force building specific tasks, cleansstate, invalidating stamps, devshell, dependency explorer, killing BitBake instances, BitBake graphical wrapper)

Layers

• Introduction, bitbake-layers tool, and yocto-layer tool.

BSP (Board Support Package)

• Introduction, System Development Workflow, BSP Developer’s Guide (bsp-tool).

Kernel

• Introduction, System Development Workflow, Kernel Development Manual (defconfig, defconfig + configuration fragment, in-tree kmod, out-of-tree kmod, fdt, etc.).

Application Development Toolkit

• Introduction, Cross-Development Toolchain, Sysroot, ADT-Eclipse Yocto Plug-in, QEMU Emulator, User Space Tools.
• Installing ADT & Toolchains
  • Using a Cross-Toolchain tarball (Introduction, Building/Installing the tarball, Cross-Toolchain + Makefile/Autotools/Autotools library + App, recipes).
  • Using the ADT Installer (Introduction, Web Server, Building image + ADT installer, Configuring and running ADT installer, adding ADT installer to web server, ADT installer on host).

Eclipse

• Introduction, Application Development Workflow.
• Working with Eclipse (rootfs features, kernel + fdt, rootfs, installing JDK and Eclipse, configuring Eclipse, installing Yocto Plugin, configuring the Yocto Plugin, creating an Autotool project, configuring Cross-Toolchains, building the project).

Debugging

• Introduction, gdb, remote gdb debugging, debugging with Eclipse (gdb remote), running from Eclipse (remote).

Profiling/Tracing

• Introduction, perf, gprof, gcov, strace, ftrace, systemtap, oprofile, LTTng, and data visualization with Eclipse.

Package Management

• Working with packages, IPK format, creating a package feed, and installing packages with opkg on the target.

Licensing

• Introduction, adding custom licenses, and Open Source License Compliance.

Devtool

• Introduction, devtool usage, and a real-world showcase using meta-cfengine.

Except where otherwise noted, the content and this course outline are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).