Compiling Linux Angstrom v2015.12 using Yocto 2.0 for the Arrow SoCKit

2/13/16 - THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

NEW: Angstrom-manifest

Starting with Angstrom v2015.06, builds are managed with the Google/Android repo tool, using Angstrom-manifest instead of the prior setup scripts. Repo does not replace Git; it is used to help manage Git repositories. For v2014.12 and older, setup scripts are still used. Yocto is still used as the build system.

Setup the repo Command

Using Angstrom-manifest requires installation of the repo command. Repo is a python script. User scripts are typically installed in ~/bin (not /bin). Follow the steps below to download repo to ~/bin and add it to your PATH. This is a one time setup step and does not need to be rerun on future builds.

Install curl if you don't already have it:

$ sudo apt-get install curl

Setup repo:

$ mkdir ~/bin
$ PATH=~/bin:$PATH
$ curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Get the Build Scripts

Download the Angstrom-manifest:

Execute the following commands from your preferred build directory (such as ~/work, ~/data, etc).

$ mkdir angstrom-manifest
$ cd angstrom-manifest
$ repo init -u git://github.com/Angstrom-distribution/angstrom-manifest -b angstrom-v2015.12-yocto2.0

We will use the master branch for now as it has recipes for newer kernel versions. Edit the manifest.xml (replace the existing revision hash tag with master):

$ sed --follow-symlinks -i '/project name="kraj\/meta-altera"/s/revision=".*"/revision="master" upstream="master"/' .repo/manifest.xml

Add the meta-arrow-sockit layer to the manifest so it is fetched from the git repo:

$ sed --follow-symlinks -i '/project name="kraj\/meta-altera"/a \ \ \<project name="arrow-socfpga\/meta-arrow-sockit" path="sources\/meta-arrow-sockit" remote="github" revision="master" upstream="master"\/\>' .repo/manifest.xml

See here if you would like more information on the repo manifest file syntax.

We have now included all the information for the required layers to fetch when we sync in the next step. With the previous setup script (oebb.sh for Angstrom 2014.12 and older), this was managed using the layers.txt file. The Angstrom manifest.xml file replaces this.

Download all of the layers (this creates the /sources folder with all of the layers defined in the manifest.xml file):

$ repo sync

Setup the Build Environment

Setup the environment for the SoCKit (or any Cyclone V based board) by running the setup-environment script. This creates the /conf directory with the local.conf and bblayers.conf files (and others).

$ MACHINE=cyclone5 . ./setup-environment

For Arria V or Arria 10, just replace the "cyclone5" with "arria5" or "arria10" respectively. If you run the ./setup-environment script without the MACHINE argument, it will launch with an interactive menu where other machines can be selected.

Now we need to add the meta-arrow-sockit layer to the bblayers.conf file so the recipes is used:

$ sed --follow-symlinks -i '/meta-96boards/a \ \ \$\{TOPDIR\}\/sources\/meta-arrow-sockit \\' conf/bblayers.conf

Build the kernel and root file system

In the newer opensource meta-altera layer (https://github.com/kraj/meta-altera) there are several choices for the kernel provider. The "Stable" versions are tied to specific hashes in the kernel git tree. The "Development" versions follow the head of the specific branch.

The table below shows kernel options and will help in setting up variables in the local.conf file.

	PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = {provider}	PREFERRED_VERSION_{provider} = {version}
Stable
linux-altera (v4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 kernels)	"linux-altera"	linux-altera = "4.x%" where x=0,1, or 2
linux-altera-ltsi (v3.10 only)	"linux-altera-ltsi"	linux-altera-ltsi = "3.10%"
linux-altera-ltsi-rt (v3.10 only)	"linux-altera-ltsi-rt"	linux-altera-ltsi-rt = "3.10%"
Development
linux-altera-dev (v4.2 only)	"linux-altera-dev"	linux-altera-dev = "4.2%"
linux-altera-ltsi-dev (v3.10 only)	"linux-altera-ltsi-dev"	linux-altera-ltsi-dev = "3.10%"
linux-altera-ltsi-rt-dev (v3.10 only)	"linux-altera-ltsi-rt-dev"	linux-altera-ltsi-rt-dev = "3.10%"

Check here for kernel version updates.

To select the kernel version, we need to set the PREFERRED_PROVIDER and PREFERRED_VERSION variables in conf/local.conf. The proper syntax looks like this:

PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = "linux-altera-ltsi"

PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-altera-ltsi = "3.10%"

In this example, we are selecting the stable 3.10 ltsi kernel. Use the commands below to update your local.conf file.

$ echo "PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = \"linux-altera-ltsi\"" >> conf/local.conf
$ echo "PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-altera-ltsi = \"3.10%\"" >> conf/local.conf
$ echo "ANGSTROM_GCC_VERSION_arm = \"linaro-4.9%\"" >> conf/local.conf

(The % after the kernel version a wildcard used to match any number of characters and is useful for specifying versions with long revision numbers.)

If PREFERRED_VERSION is not specified, bitbake will default to the newest version.

Now we are ready to build the kernel:

$ bitbake virtual/kernel

the root file system:

$ bitbake sockit-gsrd-console-image

and u-boot:

$ bitbake virtual/bootloader

You can build the kernel, root file system, and u-boot by specifying on one line:

$ bitbake virtual/kernel sockit-gsrd-console-image virtual/bootloader

During the build, you can expect to see a number of warning messages:

• "WARNING: Variable key FILES_{$PN} ..."
• "WARNING: ... License value ... has invalid format ..."
• "WARNING: Unable to get checksum ..."
• "WARNING: No recipes available for ..."
• "WARNING: No bb files matched ..."
• "WARNING: Failed to fetch URL ..."
• "WARNING: QA Issue ..."

Most of these warnings can be ignored since they pertain to existing layers in the manifest.xml file that are not used in our build. Generally these are recipe issues that need to be resolved by the recipe maintainer. You should verify that the warnings do not apply to the primary layers used for our build (meta-altera, meta-angstrom, meta-arrow-sockit, etc).

The resulting output files are found in /angstrom-manifest/deploy/glibc/images/cyclone5

You are now ready to create or update your SD card.