Overview

This page is based on Yocto's project manual and demostrates how to use the Extended SDK to make apps develoment easier on agilex and stratix 10.

Introduction

Yocto's Extensible SDK helps to add new applications and libraries to an already prebuilt image. This allows us to test source changes and deploy them on the target hardware. The main benefit over the standard SDK is improved team workflow due to tighter integration with the OpenEmbedded build system.

All SDKs consist in the following:

• Cross-Development Toolchain: Compiler, debugger and other tools.
• Libraries, headers and symbols: All librares match the image produced by Yocto.
• Environment setup script: A *.sh that set up the cross-development environment by defining variables.

Setting ESDK up

There are two ways to get the eSDK working for every specific board. These are described as follows:

Dowload eSDK

It is possible to download the eSDK based on the official GSRD to start building applications. To do that execute the following commands: Agilex:

cd ~/
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2022.12/eSDK/agilex_fm61_gsrd/agilex_fm61_gsrd_esdk.sh 
bash ~/agilex_fm61_gsrd_esdk.sh 

Stratix 10

cd ~/
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2022.12/eSDK/s10_gsrd/s10_gsrd_esdk.sh
bash ~/s10_gsrd_esdk.sh

Build eSDK

It is recommended to follow the official GSRD guide either for Agilex or Stratix10 at Building GSRD point.

1. Choose the target board: stratix10:

export BOARD=stratix10

agilex7:

export BOARD=agilex7_dk_si_agf014ea

2. Once everything is setup we can build our eSDK installer as follows:

bitbake_esdk 
package

This will produce a script called poky-glibc-x86_64-gsrd-console-image-armv8a-$BOARD-toolchain-ext-4.3.4.sh at $WORKSPACE/$BOARD-gsrd-images/esdk/. Now we can execute the script and install it.

bash  $WORKSPACE/$BOARD-gsrd-images/esdk/poky-glibc-x86_64-gsrd-console-image-armv8a-$BOARD-toolchain-ext-4.3.4.sh

Setting the environment up

Once it is successfully installed we should initialize the eSDK environment by executing the following commands:

 . ~/poky_sdk/environment-setup-armv8a-poky-linux

Adding an Example Application

In this section we will show how to add an example app from github and a local application.

Using Application from Github

We will use an example application from DynamicDevices.This example shows a hello-world from a .so installed in the board and a hello-world defined in the main(). Let's add this recipe by executing the following commands

 devtool add https://github.com/DynamicDevices/bbexample  

To build the example just run:

devtool build bbexample 

Now eploy the application to a board currently runing linux and sshd by executing the following command:

devtool deploy-target bbexample 192.168.0.5 #Adjust this value to your actual board ip 

Using Local SourceCode

The eSDK uses autoconf tools to define a makefile and build the app that will be installed on the target board.

Create the app folder

mkdir ~/helloworld; pushd helloworld

1 main.c: The actual source code

cat << EOT > main.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void){ 
   printf("Helloworld\n"); 
   return 0;
}
EOT

2 configure.ac: This file will produce a configure script that will produce the Makefile that matches the build system( our eSDK:

cat << EOT > configure.ac
AC_INIT([helloworld], [0.1],[user@user.com])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign])
AC_PROG_CC
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT 
EOT

3 Makefile.am: This defines the Makefile

cat << EOT > Makefile.am 
bin_PROGRAMS=helloworld
helloworld_SOURCES=main.c
EOT

Add the new recipe and build it by executing the following command:

popd;
devtool add helloworld ~/helloworld/ 
devtool build helloworld

Deploy it by executing the following command:

devtool deploy-target helloworld 192.168.0.5 #Adjust this value to your actual board ip 

Testing

bbexample

Within the board bbexample should be installed as a system app and it is callable from anywhere as follows:

root@agilex:~# bbexample
Hello Yocto World...
Hello World (from a shared library!)

Helloworld

This example is installed like bbexample and can be called as follows:

root@agilex:~# helloworld
Helloworld
root@agilex:~# 

Publish

We can publish the recipe by executing "devtool finish". This will create patches corresponding to commits in the local git repository(~/poky_sdk/workspace/sources/bbexample) and move it to a layer.

We will explain this using bbexample, but you can use any other recipe added in the eSDK's workspace (~/poky_sdk/workspace/recipes) that has a git repository defined. For demonstration purposes we will create a new layer by executing the following command:

cd ~/poky_sdk/ 
bash
. layers/poky/oe-init-build-env  ~/poky_sdk/layers/
bitbake-layers create-layer $PWD/meta-custom
bitbake-layers add-layer $PWD/meta-custom
exit

Let's create a little modification to the source code by executing the following command:

cd ~/poky_sdk/ 
sed -i "s/Hello Yocto World/Hello Yocto World litle modification/g" workspace/sources/bbexample/bbexample.c
pushd workspace/sources/bbexample/
git add bbexample.c
git commit -m "little modification"
popd

Lets publish the recipe:

devtool finish bbexample layers/meta-custom/ -f

Now we can see the new recipe created and its .patch as well in ~/poky_sdk/layers/meta-custom: