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

Course Outline

Introduction

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

Embedded Specifics

• Comparison of Linux on the desktop versus Linux in embedded systems, cross/native toolchains, pre-built toolchains, build systems, C libraries, and more.

Evaluation Board

• Understanding the boot process and observing the boot sequence.

Yocto Introduction

• What is Yocto? Why use the YP? What constitutes the YP? Poky, BitBake, OE-Core, and Metadata.

The YP Autobuilder

• What is the YP Autobuilder? Docker container usage (pulling and launching).

The YP Workflow

• Introduction.
• Workflow overview and OE architecture.
• Configuration (User, Metadata, Machine, Distribution Policy).
• Sources.
• Build process (Source fetching, patching, configure/compile/install, Pseudo, recipe examples, output analysis/packaging, image generation, SDK generation).
• Customising images (Introduction, local.conf, IMAGE_FEATURES, custom .bb files, custom package groups).

BitBake

• History.
• Syntax.
• Debugging techniques (debug levels, locating recipes/images/package groups, BitBake environment/tasks/logging, forcing specific tasks, cleansstate, invalidating stamps, devshell, dependency explorer, terminating all BitBake instances, BitBake graphical wrapper).

Layers

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

BSP

• Introduction, system development workflow, BSP Developer’s Guide (bsp-tool).

Kernel

• Introduction, system development workflow, Kernel Development Manual (defconfig, defconfig plus configuration fragment, in-tree kernel modules, out-of-tree kernel modules, 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 with Makefile/Autotools/Autotools library + application, recipes).
  • Using the ADT installer (Introduction, web server, building the image + ADT installer, configuring and running the ADT installer, adding the ADT installer to the web server, ADT installer on the host).

Eclipse

• Introduction, application development workflow.
• Working with Eclipse (rootfs features, kernel + fdt, rootfs, installing JDK, installing Eclipse, configuring Eclipse, installing the Yocto Plug-in, configuring the Yocto Plug-in, creating an autotooled 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 + Eclipse (data visualization).

Package Management

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

Licensing

• Introduction, adding custom licenses, open source license compliance.

Devtool

• Introduction, devtool, 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).