The buildroot-external-st project is an extension of the Buildroot build system with ready-to-use configurations for the STMicroelectronics STM32MP1 and STM32MP2 platforms.
More specifically, this project is a BR2_EXTERNAL repository for Buildroot, with a number of defconfigs that allow to quickly build embedded Linux systems for the STM32MPU Discovery Kit platforms and Evaluation board. It’s a great way to get started with Buildroot on those platforms.
Today, we are happy to announce an updated version of this project, published under the branch st/2025.02.5 at https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot-external-st.
Release notes
This new version brings a number of additional features:
- Updated to work with Buildroot 2025.02.5, latest point release of Buildroot’s current LTS branch
- Updated to use the 6.1 “ecosystem” from ST, which means we’re using updated BSP components from ST, namely Linux 6.6, U-Boot 2023.10, TF-A 2.10, OP-TEE 4.0 and gcnano-binaries 6.4.21
- Added support for the STM32MP235F Discovery Kit board. Although this board does not physically exist, it enables users to emulate the behavior of an STM32MP235 system using the STM32MP257F Discovery Kit. Since the STM32MP235 implements a subset of the STM32MP257 features, this configuration allows developers to evaluate the STM32MP235 SoC.
- Added support for the STM32MP215F-DK Discovery Kit board which is not yet available for sale at the time of this writing
Getting started
The documentation available on the Github page details how to use this work, but here is a quick start in just a few steps:
- Retrieve Buildroot itself, a branch containing a few patches on top of upstream 2025.02 is needed
$ git clone -b st/2025.02.5 https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot.git - Retrieve buildroot-external-st
$ git clone -b st/2025.02.5 https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot-external-st.git - Go into the Buildroot directory
$ cd buildroot/ - Configure Buildroot, for example here the demo configuration for the STM32MP257F-DK
$ make BR2_EXTERNAL=../buildroot-external-st st_stm32mp257f_dk_demo_defconfig - Run the build
$ make - Flash the resulting SD card image available at
output/images/sdcard.imgand boot your board!
Prebuilt images
You can also download a prebuilt image from the Starter Package Documentation to quickly test it on your board.
If you have any question or issue, feel free to use the Github issue tracker to contact us. Bootlin is an ST Authorized Partner, and can provide engineering and training services around embedded Linux on STM32MP platforms.
