How to use the meta-warp7-distro

This article is intented to present and explain how to work with the meta-warp7-distro, which is a new dedicated DISTRO layer for the WaRP7.

The Layers used in this post are:

• meta-warp7-distro;
• meta-swupdate;
• meta-qt5;
• meta-openembedded;

The content

The meta-warp7-distro provides several parts such as:

Class

A single class base-image.bbclass, to handle the image configuration. This includes for example:

• SWUpdate (to manage software updade)
• Alsa (utils and tools)
• dnsmasq and hostapd (needed if you want to turn on the Hotspot)
• bluez5 (To play with Bluetooth protocol)
• mosquitto (libs and associated tools -> mosquitto_pub and mosquitto_sub)
• An SSH (dropbear) server and a sftp server (to deploy Qt5 Application via QtCreator)
• There are also packages like i2c-tools, spitools, dbus or evtest

Images

2 Images are available:

• base-image.bb (inherit of base-image class)
• qt5-image (with qtbase, qtbase-*, qtserialbus modules)

Kernel

The bbappend file allows to support new features like:

• gpio-exporter driver (see documentation)
• Cortex M4 support (Thanks to Vanessa for this)

The gpio-exporter is used by init script to export all GPIO’s into /dev/mikrobus/gpio_name, as defined in device-tree source file.

Userspace Application

Furthermore, some application are provided to work with the MikroBUS Socket and click modules (air Quality 2 click, DAC 3 Click, …)

Building the qt image

To build the qt image, follow the next command lines.

First, install the repo tool (very useful to manage several git repository):

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

Then, you have to download the BSP (from FSL community)

$: PATH=${PATH}:~/bin
$: mkdir warp7_bsp
$: cd warp7_bsp
$: repo init -u https://github.com/Freescale/fsl-community-bsp-platform -b pyro (replace pyro by master if you want to test master instead)
$: repo sync

Now, it’s time to download the meta-warp7-distro and its dependencies (always on pyro branch)

$: cd sources
$: git clone -b pyro https://github.com/WaRP7/meta-warp7-distro.git
$: git clone -b pyro https://github.com/meta-qt5/meta-qt5.git
$: git clone -b pyro https://github.com/sbabic/meta-swupdate.git
$: cd ../

Once is done, you can create your environment (Machine + Distribution) via the following command line:

$: MACHINE=imx7s-warp DISTRO=warp7 source setup-environment warp7-build/ 

• MACHINE : imx7s-warp, specify the target.
• DISTRO : warp7, to use the specifc configuration available inside the layer.
• warp7-build/, where you want to build.

It’s now the moment to prepare your build. For this, you must include all layers that you need, either by the conf/bblayers.conf file or by directly via the bitbake-layers util:

$: bitbake-layers add-layer ../sources/meta-qt5/ 
$: bitbake-layers add-layer ../sources/meta-warp7-distro/
$: bitbake-layers add-layer ../sources/meta-swupdate/ 
$: bitbake-layers add-layer ../sources/meta-openembedded/meta-python/ 
$: bitbake-layers add-layer ../sources/meta-openembedded/meta-networking/

Let’s build with bitbake

$: bitbake qt5-image

After a long while, you can find generated files (Bootloader, Root-Filesystem and so on) inside the following directory : warp7-build/tmp/deploy/images/imx7s-warp

You can now flashing your board through the bootloader (u-boot) and the ums utility to mount the eMMC.

For further information about Flashing procedure, follow this documentation.

Some examples on next articles !