Creating a custom BSP layer

These custom changes are kept on a separate Yocto layer, called a Board Support Package (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.

How to do it...

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-skeleton layer included in Poky
• By using the yocto-layer command-line tool

You can have a look at the meta-skeleton layer in Poky and see that it includes the following elements:

• A layer.conf file, where the layer configuration variables are set
• A COPYING.MIT license file
• Several directories named with the recipes prefix with example recipes for BusyBox, the Linux kernel and an example module...