Computers are cool

Building a Yocto distribution only from ready-made meta-layers is like baking brownies from a box — quick and decent, but rarely the perfect dessert. To really match your taste, you’ll need to add your own ingredients with custom layers and recipes.

In the previous blog posts a basic setup for a RPI distribution with Yocto and a way to handle multiple layers synchronized with repo manifests were already discussed. This article is a step forward, making use of the knownledge gathered so far, yet allowing for even more automatization, all thanks to the Docker Containers.

Yocto has layers, like Ogres and onions. Keeping all of them in sync? That’s where things can get messy, unless the right tools are used.

This is a short Yocto tutorial to help me (and you) set up a new Raspberry Pi Yocto environment. We’ll gather the meta layers, pick the target board, and finally build a custom Raspberry Pi Linux distribution.