Updated Buildroot support for STM32MP1 platforms, ST BSP v5.0

We continue the support of the buildroot-external-st project as presented in our first announce, which is an extension of the Buildroot build system with ready-to-use configurations for the STMicroelectronics STM32MP1 platforms. We already published several updates of this support, with the LTS 2022.02 and version 4.0 of ST BSP version update and the LTS 2022.02.7 and version 4.1 of ST BSP version update.

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 STM32MP1 Discovery Kit platforms. 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/2023.02.10 at https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot-external-st. This new version brings a number of additional features:

  • Updated to work with Buildroot 2023.02.10, latest point release of Buildroot current LTS branch
  • Updated to use the 5.0 “ecosystem” from ST, which means we’re using updated BSP components from ST, namely Linux 6.1, U-Boot 2022.10, TF-A 2.8 and OP-TEE 3.19
  • Integration of OTA with the RAUC tool in the demo configurations
  • Addition of Starter Packages, which are pre-built images of the root filesystem, as well as matching SDKs, to be able to test Buildroot on STM32MP1 without doing a full build, and do application development

The documentation available on the Github page details how to use this work, but here is a quick start in just a few steps:

  1. Retrieve Buildroot itself, a branch containing a few patches on top of upstream 2023.02 is needed
    $ git clone -b st/2023.02.10 https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot.git
  2. Retrieve buildroot-external-st
    $ git clone -b st/2023.02.10 https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot-external-st.git
  3. Go into the Buildroot directory
    $ cd buildroot/
  4. Configure Buildroot, for example here the demo configuration for the STM32MP157F-DK2
    $ make BR2_EXTERNAL=../buildroot-external-st st_stm32mp157f_dk2_demo_defconfig
  5. Run the build
    $ make
  6. Flash the resulting SD card image available at output/images/sdcard.img and boot 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 STM32MP1 platforms.

Author: Köry Maincent

Köry Maincent is an embedded Linux and kernel engineer at Bootlin, which he joined in 2020.

2 thoughts on “Updated Buildroot support for STM32MP1 platforms, ST BSP v5.0”

    1. Yes, ST is actively engaged with the upstreaming, and a lot of the support is actually already upstream. Of course, if there’s anything that you need that is missing upstream and you would like to see it supported upstream, Bootlin will be happy to provide its expertise to help with this work.

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