Build IoT-LAB images and packages

Yocto Project aim to develop embedded Linux images and user-space applications that run on targeted devices like IoT-LAB Open A8 and RPI3 hardware.

The process of building images and packages has been wrapped in a Makefile for easier use. This will setup you environment if it hasn't been set before, update the configuration for your machine and build the images or packages.

System Requirements

For Ubuntu and Debian Linux distributions

$ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib \
    build-essential chrpath socat libsdl1.2-dev xterm

For others distributions view the Yocto official documentation.

Build images

To build images you can run:

$ make build-all 
# or one by one
$ make iotlab-image

By default the Makefile builds an image for IoT-LAB A8 hardware. If you want to build image for RPI3 hardware you should specify the target as follows:

$ make TARGET=rpi3 iotlab-image

Build packages

To build package you can run:

$ make build-pkg-<pkg_name>

Build Linux kernel/U-boot

$ make build-kernel
$ make build-uboot

Manual process

$ git submodule update --init --remote (eg. only the first time)
$ source ./poky/oe-init-build-env build
$ bitbake -k iotlab-image-open-a8
$ bitbake -k <pkg_name>

If you want to build for RPI3 hardware:

$ source ./poky/oe-init-build-env build-rpi3
$ bitbake -k iotlab-image-rpi3

Yocto and OpenEmbedded

At the top of the directory you can find a local copy of:

• Yocto project (poky)
• OpenEmbedded layers (meta-openembedded)
• Raspberry Pi boards layer (meta-raspberrypi)
• Java OpenJDK layer (meta-java)

The build system uses sub-modules and were initialized as follows:

$ git submodule add -b dunfell git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky
$ git submodule add -b dunfell git://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
$ git submodule add -b dunfell git://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-java
$ git submodule add -b dunfell git://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-raspberrypi
$ git commit -m "Add submodules meta-openembedded/poky/meta-java/meta-raspberrypi"

Use git submodule status and/or check file .gitmodules for details.

$ git submodule status
-67e48693501bddb80745b9735b7b3d4d28dce9a1 meta-java
-55c8a76da5dc099a7bc3838495c672140cedb78e meta-openembedded
-a5f9b07a820d50ae5fb62e07306cd4e72d8638a9 meta-raspberrypi
-50fdd784231299bedb008f20adeaeeca3eb1452d poky

The sub-modules are set to allow for tracking of upstream updates on branch dunfell, current TLS release version of Yocto. You may update the sub-modules to use the latest upstream version using:

$ git submodule update --remote

Should you need to update either of the sub-modules to a specific version, simply cd to it, git pull, inspect changes, then git checkout the desired version or tag. Then cd .. and git commit the new sub-module(s) setup. If switching to another branch, update .gitmodules accordingly.