OpenEmbedded/Yocto BSP layer for SolidRun's iMX8M Plus & Nano based platforms

This layer provides support for SolidRun's iMX8M Plus & Nano based platforms for use with OpenEmbedded and Yocto Freescale's BSP layer.

Instructions

Create working folder for sources and build files:
```
 $ mkdir imx-yocto
 $ cd imx-yocto
```

Get NXP Ycoto sources(require repo app):

 $ repo init -u https://github.com/SolidRun/meta-solidrun-arm-imx8 -b kirkstone-imx8m -m sr-imx-5.15.71-2.2.0.xml
 $ repo sync

Add the meta-solidrun-arm-imx8 layer (curent git repository) into the sources directory, the directory layout should be like this:

.
├── sources
│   	├── base
│   	├── meta-browser
│   	├── meta-freescale
│   	├── meta-freescale-3rdparty
│   	├── meta-freescale-distro
│   	├── meta-fsl-bsp-release
│   	├── meta-hailo
│   	├── meta-openembedded
│   	├── meta-qt5
│   	├── meta-rust
│   	├── meta-solidrun-arm-imx8
│   	├── meta-timesys
│   	└── poky
│
├── downloads
└── ...

Configure target machine and distro:

MACHINE	Description
imx8mpsolidrun	All i.MX8M Plus based products
solidsensen8	SolidSense N8

Select appropriate machine from the table above, and set in environment:

# E.g. imx8mpsolidrun:
MACHINE=imx8mpsolidrun

DISTRO	Description
fsl-imx-fb	NXP Distro with Framebuffer Graphics
fsl-imx-wayland	NXP Distro with Wayland Graphics
fsl-imx-x11	NXP Distro with X11 Graphics
fsl-imx-xwayland	NXP Distro with Wayland Graphics with X11 Compatibility

While NXP supports multiple graphical systems, "fsl-imx-xwayland" is recommended for greatest compatibility. New designs should consider "fsl-imx-wayland" without X11 compatibility:

# E.g. fsl-imx-xwayland
DISTRO=fsl-imx-xwayland

Configure machine, distro and create build environment: After running the following commands, you need to accept the EULA (scrool down and run "y")

DISTRO=$DISTRO MACHINE=$MACHINE source imx-setup-release.sh -b build-$DISTRO-$MACHINE

Build Yocto image by running the first, which is a minimal image (lacks firmwares) and then second which is full image including demos: (The following command can take several hours)

$ bitbake core-image-minimal $ bitbake imx-image-full $ bitbake imx-hailo-demo-image

The image will be ready at tmp/deploy/images/imx8mpsolidrun and should look as follow:

tmp/deploy/images/imx8mpsolidrun/core-image-minimal-imx8mpsolidrun.wic.zst

tmp/deploy/images/imx8mpsolidrun/imx-image-full-imx8mpsolidrun.wic.zst

To flash the image to a micro SD run -

zstd -d -c tmp/deploy/images/imx8mpsolidrun/imx-image-full-imx8mpsolidrun.wic.zst | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Or for a multi-core machine this can done faster using

pzstd -d -c tmp/deploy/images/imx8mpsolidrun/imx-image-full-imx8mpsolidrun.wic.zst | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync

(Notice that /dev/sdX is the block device points to your micro SD)

Instructions for building under docker container

Since this release of Yocto doesn't support latest disribution releases the following instructions provides information how to build under a container.

When performing this the following is valid -

The contained build environment and the user's workdir is shared under same UID and GUID
The user can build inside the container, but deploy on a micro SD, eMMC or anything else outside of the container.

Create a new image called yocto-build-image based on ubuntu-18.04

Follow the commands below to; first clone this branch and run the following command only once -

cd docker
docker build --tag yocto-build-image:latest .

Spin a container and mount your working directory into it

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD":/home/build/work/imx8mp/ yocto-build-image:latest /bin/bash
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo
chmod a+x repo

and then follow the above instructions on how to build (Notice that /home//work/imx8mp directory now is shared between the container and the outside deplelopment environment)

Performance increase building source with LTO enabled

To achieve better performance on the platform you can enable building the source with LTO (Link Time Optimization) enabled. To do this add the following lines to your local.conf

require conf/distro/include/lto.inc
DISTRO_FEATURES:append = " lto"

Include NetworkManager and ModemManager for network control

If you prefer to use NetworkManager and ModemManager rather than the default Yocto configuration of connman and ofono please add the following snippet to your local.conf IMAGE_INSTALL_remove += " ofono connman connman-gnome connman-conf" IMAGE_INSTALL_remove += " packagegroup-core-tools-testapps" PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "ofono connman connman-gnome connman-conf" PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "connman-client connman-tools" PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "packagegroup-core-tools-testapps" DISTRO_FEATURES_remove = " 3g" IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " networkmanager networkmanager-nmcli modemmanager" IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " networkmanager-bash-completion" PACKAGECONFIG_append_pn-networkmanager = " modemmanager ppp"

Enabling Mender

You can enable mender OTA with these steps:

Add mender-core to bblayers.conf:

BBLAYERS += "${BSPDIR}/sources/meta-mender/meta-mender-core"
Configure mender. You can find sample configuration in conf/sample/local.conf.mender.sample

doesnotexist/meta-solidrun-arm-imx8