Tag: yocto

Yocto 5.0 Scarthgap released, Bootlin contributions inside

Yocto Project SummitThe latest release of the Yocto Project, version 5.0, code named Scarthgap has been published a few days ago. The release notes provide the best summary of what’s new in this release. Being a Long Term Support (LTS) release, it will be maintained during 4 years with bug fixes and security updates, which makes this release particularly important for a large number of embedded Linux projects and products.

At Bootlin, we are using Yocto for a large fraction of the Linux Board Support Packages that we develop, maintain and upgrade for our customers. But we’re not only users of Yocto: we’re also contributors and maintainers. In this blog post, we’ll highlight our contributions to this release, which take various forms.

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Keep your Yocto layer simple! Introducing meta-kiss, a working reference Yocto/OE setup

At Bootlin we help many of our customers using Yocto/OpenEmbedded to build the Linux software stack running on their end products. While doing that we have seen all sorts of problems caused by all sorts of complicated code in their build system setup. So we wondered what we could do to improve the overall situation. Continue reading “Keep your Yocto layer simple! Introducing meta-kiss, a working reference Yocto/OE setup”

Yocto Project Summit 2023.11: 2 Bootlin talks

The Yocto Project regularly organizes an-online conference called the Yocto Project Summit. The next edition, Yocto Project Summit 2023.11 will take place on November 28-30, from 12:00 to 18:00 UTC, and at just $40, attending is really affordable.

Yocto Project Summit

Bootlin is not only a big user of the Yocto Project, but also a significant contributor to the project, so we’re happy to announce that our two talk proposals for the Yocto Project Summit 2023.11 have been accepted. Bootlin engineers will therefore deliver the following talks:

If you are a user of the Yocto Project, or intend to become one, we can only recommend you to attend this event. And of course, if you need training on Yocto Project, or engineering/support services, do not hesitate to contact us!

Yocto Project 4.2 released – Bootlin contributions inside

The Yocto Project has published its new release: 4.2, also known as “Mickledore”.

It features improved Rust support, BitBake engine improvements, support for Linux 6.1 (the latest Long Term Support kernel), new QEMU features, testing improvements and of course many other new features and package updates. See the release notes for all details.

Bootlin has actively contributed to this release, as seen in the number of commits, in particular through our work maintaining the documentation, improving regression detection and on Autobuilder SWAT.

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Yocto: sharing the sstate cache and download directories

When developing projects based on Yocto Project / OpenEmbedded, a quite common practice is to have multiple build environments in different directories: one per product, or one for each development branch, or for other scenarios. Each build environment could have different layers, a different configuration, or just using a different version of the source code.

With default settings, different build directories result in duplicated storage for the downloaded source code and build artifacts, as well as duplicated time for downloading the sources and to build everything. This can be troublesome for large projects.

Fortunately, the bitbake build engine can share both the downloaded source code and the intermediate build results across multiple build directories, saving build time and disk space.

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Continuous integration in Yocto: improving the regressions detection

The Yocto Project is an open source umbrella project which gathers all needed tools to build full Linux distributions for a wide variety of devices. As the interest for Yocto grew since its first steps, its size and number of use cases increased consequentially. This growth quickly introduced the need of automated testing so that developers can keep introducing new features to the project while making sure not to break any existing part. Bootlin engineer Alexis Lothoré has recently been involved in the Continuous Integration infrastructure of the Yocto Project and has brought improvements to allow Yocto maintainers to detect regressions earlier.

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Embedded Linux and Yocto training courses now available in Italian

Flag of ItalyBuongiorno!

For many years, we have been offering our training courses in both English and French. We are happy to announce that we are now expanding our offering towards our Italian customers: we are now able to deliver our very popular Embedded Linux system development and Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded development training courses in Italian. Those courses are delivered by a native Italian speaker, Bootlin engineer Luca Ceresoli. Luca has 20 years of experience working with embedded systems, including 15 years on embedded Linux.

Thanks to this offering, our Italian customers can enjoy a training course delivered in their native language, which obviously facilitates communication, understanding and interaction. We can offer our Embedded Linux course and Yocto course in Italian through either private on-site sessions or private on-line sessions. Contact us at training@bootlin.com for details and pricing!

Ti aspettiamo!

Updated Yocto support for SiFive RISC-V platforms

SiFive logoA few months ago, we started supporting SiFive in their effort to maintain and improve the Yocto support for their RISC-V processors and platforms. The Yocto support for SiFive platforms is divided into two layers:

These layers allow to build ready-to-use Yocto images for the Qemu RISC-V 64-bit emulation, the HiFive Unleashed and HiFive Unmatched development boards.

As part of our work on the Yocto support for SiFive platofrms, we have already published three new releases of these layers: 2022.06, 2022.08 and 2022.10. In this blog post, we review the main highlights of those releases.

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Upcoming Yocto Project Summit 2022.11 – One talk from Bootlin

Headline of the Yocto Project Summit 2022.11.

As every six months for the last two years, a new virtual edition of the Yocto Project Summit is coming, and its schedule has been announced.

This summit will be over 3 days:

  • Tuesday, November 29
    Two tracks in parallel, a beginner track and a “hands-on” track for people already familiar with the concepts.
  • Wednesday, November 30
    Only one track, with intermediate level talks on all kinds of topics.
  • Thursday, December 1
    Only one track, starting with “product showcase” talks and going on with intermediate level talks on various topics too.

Last but not least, at the end of each day, you will get a chance to hangout with other contributors and users, and ask all the questions that you may have.

Bootlin is proud to contribute one talk to this summit: Bitbaking SPDX SBoM which we will prepare and present. This talk will cover one of the topics we explored to document features of the Yocto Project which had no documentation yet. SPDX and SBoM are related to software supply chain security, vulnerability management and license compliance. These are hot topics these days, and there will be another presentation about SBoMs (SBoMs and Supply Chain with the Yocto Project by Joshua Watt), and two about security (Detecting and fixing CVE security issues in yocto based embedded Linux distribution by Mikko Rapeli, and Maintenance and Security of a Yocto Project-based Distribution: A Year of Experiences by Marta Rybczynska).

Bootlin is indeed involved in the Yocto Project by maintaining its documentation (see the active contributors through the git repository), and also a participant to the Yocto SWAT team, keeping track of all the issues encountered by the autobuilder machines and runs.

Though the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded are Open Source projects, registration for this conference is not free but just costs 40 USD, to cover infrastructure and staffing costs, the event being hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Yocto training course updated to Kirkstone release

Yocto ProjectBack in May 2022, the Yocto Project published the Kirkstone release, the latest Long Term Support version of the popular embedded Linux build system. See the release notes of this 4.0 release.

For many years, Bootlin has helped plenty of engineers around the world get started with the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded thanks to our Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded development training course, whose training materials are freely accessible, to everyone.

We are happy to announce that we have just published the update of these materials to cover this new Kirstone release. Our practical lab instructions, available for both the STM32MP1 Discovery Kit and the BeagleBoneBlack, have been correspondingly updated:

This update was done by Bootlin engineer Luca Ceresoli, who is teaching this updated version of our course this week. The next public session, open to individual registration, will take place on September 26-30, and will be taught by Maxime Chevallier. If you are interested, you can register directly online. We also offer this course in private sessions, organized on demand for your team, either on-line or on-site, you can contact us for more details.