Y12 Comprehensive Yocto Project Usage

Objectives
  • Using and customizing Yocto
  • Creating Yocto-based Embedded Linux platforms
  • Using Yocto to develop components
  • Customizing the BSP
  • Building out of tree modules
  • Setup Source cache
Labs are conducted QEMU ARM-based board
We use a recent version of Yocto
  • Theoretical course
    • PDF course material (in English) supplemented by a printed version.
    • The trainer answers trainees' questions during the training and provide technical and pedagogical assistance.
  • Practical activities
    • Practical activities represent from 40% to 50% of course duration.
    • Code examples, exercises and solutions
    • One PC (Linux ou Windows) for the practical activities with, if appropriate, a target board.
      • One PC for two trainees when there are more than 6 trainees.
    • For onsite trainings:
      • An installation and test manual is provided to allow preinstallation of the needed software.
      • The trainer come with target boards if needed during the practical activities (and bring them back at the end of the course).
  • Downloadable preconfigured virtual machine for post-course practical activities
  • At the start of each session the trainer will interact with the trainees to ensure the course fits their expectations and correct if needed
  • Any embedded systems engineer or technician with the above prerequisites.
  • The prerequisites indicated above are assessed before the training by the technical supervision of the traineein his company, or by the trainee himself in the exceptional case of an individual trainee.
  • Trainee progress is assessed in two different ways, depending on the course:
    • For courses lending themselves to practical exercises, the results of the exercises are checked by the trainer while, if necessary, helping trainees to carry them out by providing additional details.
    • Quizzes are offered at the end of sections that do not include practical exercises to verifythat the trainees have assimilated the points presented
  • At the end of the training, each trainee receives a certificate attesting that they have successfully completed the course.
    • In the event of a problem, discovered during the course, due to a lack of prerequisites by the trainee a different or additional training is offered to them, generally to reinforce their prerequisites,in agreement with their company manager if applicable.

Course Outline

  • Overview of Yocto
    • History
    • Yocto, Open Embedded and Poky
    • Purpose of the Yocto project
    • The main projects
  • Yocto architecture
    • Overview
    • Recipes and classes
    • Tasks
  • Build system objectives
    • Building deployable images
    • Layers and layer priorities
    • Directory layout
    • Configuration files (local, machine and distribution)
    • The bitbake tool
  • Using Yocto
    • Building a package
    • Building an image (root file system + u-boot + kernel)
  • Miscellaneous tools around Yocto
    • Yocto SDK
    • Extensible SDK
Exercise:  Building a root file system using Yocto
Exercise:  Use bitbake commands to build package & images
Exercise:  Building a root file system using Yocto
Exercise:  Build an extensible SDK for the generated image
Exercise:  Deploy the generated image
  • Recipe architecture
    • Tasks
    • Task dependencies
    • Recipe dependencies
  • The bitbake language
    • Standard variables and functions
    • Classes and recipes
    • The base Yocto classes
    • Main bitbake commands
  • Adding a new layer
    • Layer structure
    • Various kinds of layers
Exercise:  Adding a new layer
  • Various kind of recipes and classes
    • Bare program
    • Makefile-based package
    • autotools-based package
    • u-boot
    • kernel
    • Out-of-tree module
  • Recipe creation strategies
    • From scratch
    • Using devtool
    • Using recipetool
    • From an existing, similar, recipe
  • Debugging recipes
    • Debugging recipe selection
    • Debugging dependencies
    • Debugging tasks
  • Defining packaging
    • Package splitting
  • Automatically starting a program
Exercise:  Writing a recipe for a local user-maintained package
Exercise:  Writing and debugging a package recipe for an autotools-based package
Exercise:  Starting a program at boot (systemd)
  • Customizing an existing package recipe (.bbappend)
  • Recipe dependencies
  • Creating and adding patches
    • Creating a patch for a community-provided component
    • Creating a patch for an user-maintained component
  • Defining new tasks
    • Task declaration
    • Coding tasks
Exercise:  Adding patches and dependencies to a community package
Exercise:  Adding a rootfsinstall task to directly copy the output of a user package in the rootfs image
  • Creating classes
    • Creating new independent classes
    • Inheriting from an existing class
Exercise:  Create a class to generalize the “rootfsinstall” task
  • Building a root file system with Yocto
    • Creating a custom root file system
  • Writing an image recipe
    • Selecting the packages to build
    • Selecting the file system types
    • The various kinds of images
  • Inheriting and customizing images
    • Customizing system configuration files (network, mount points, …)
  • Users and groups management
  • Package management
    • rpm
    • opkg
Exercise:  Writing and building an image recipe
Exercise:  Add new users to the image
Exercise:  Create an image with package support for OTA deployment
Exercise:  Test OTA update on the generated image
  • Using devtool to create a package and its recipe
  • Using devtool to modify an existing package and recipe
  • Using devtool to update a recipe to build a new version of a package
Exercise:  Create, test and modify a recipe for an existing package using devtool
  • Adding eclipse remote debug packages
  • Configuring eclipse
Exercise:  Create remote debugging session using eclipse
  • Introduction to python
  • Using python in Yocto
    • The main bitbake classes
    • Defining variable values in Python
    • Writing tasks in Python
Exercise:  Writing a task and customizing a recipe in Python
  • Porting Yocto to a new board
  • BSP architecture
    • Selecting and configuring u-boot recipe
    • Selecting and configuring kernel recipe
  • Adding a new BSP layer (yocto-bsp create)
Exercise:  Creating a new BSP layer
  • Adding a custom u-boot to Yocto
  • Customizing the Yocto kernel recipe
    • Setting the default configuration
    • Adding patches
    • Specifying the kernel sources
  • Configuring Linux Kernel
    • Using menuconfig
    • Using patches
    • Creating Configuration Fragments
    • Validating Configuration
  • Kernel device tree
Exercise:  Create u-boot and kernel recipes to use custom versions, test the result
Exercise:  Patch kernel and activate new options using a fragment
Exercise:  Create and use a new device tree
  • Adding modules to image
  • Creating an out-of-tree module
  • Kernel modules with eSDK
Exercise:  Build and test modules
  • Setting up a Yocto source cache
    • Local, per system, cache setup
    • Setting up a global, network wide, cache
  • Customizing the build system
    • Using a prebuilt toolchain
    • Using a pre-compiled kernel
  • Optimizing Yocto build times
    • Using prebuilt, binary, packages
    • Using shared compilation caches
Exercise:  Setting up a global source cache
Exercise:  Setting up an optimized build environment and rebuilding an image