The changes needed to support a new hardware platform, or machine, are kept on a separate Yocto layer, called a BSP layer. This separation is best for future updates and patches to the system. A BSP layer can support any number of new machines and any new software feature that is linked to the hardware itself.
By convention, Yocto layer names start with meta, short for metadata. A BSP layer may then add a bsp keyword, and finally a unique name. We will call our layer meta-bsp-custom.
There are several ways to create a new layer:
- Manually, once you know what is required
- By copying the
meta-skeletonlayer included in Poky - By using the
yocto-layercommand-line tool
You can have a look at the meta-skeleton layer in Poky and see that it includes the following elements:
- A
layer.conffile, where the layer configuration variables are set - A
COPYING.MITlicense file - Several directories named with the
recipes-prefix with example recipes for BusyBox, the Linux kernel...