OpenSTLinux - Creating a recipe for a git source tree

Introduction

Last month one of my friends, who is a FAE of STMicroelectronics, told me that STMicroelectronics released a new STM32MP1 series microprocessor last year. Each of STM32Mp1 series microprocessor has Arm Cortex-A7 and Cortex-M4 cores, therefore we could run a Linux OS on it. Since my friend knows that I am pretty interested in Linux, he suggested me to take a look that new product.

Consequently I googled the product information about STM32MP1, and I found STMicroelectronics has released some development boards for it. One of the board, which is STM32MP157C-DK2 discovery board, attracted my eye.

The reasons why the board attracted my eye are:

1. The board comes with a LCD panel. It could be useful to monitor what happens to the board.
2. The price of the board is only US$99.
3. STMicroelectronics provides STM32 MPU OpenSTLinux Distribution for the board, which is a Linux distribution based on Yocto/OpenEmbedded build systems.
4. The best part is STMicroelectronics provides a STM32 MPU wiki. The wiki provides a lot of practical information about how to learn and customize the OpenSTLinux distribution through Yocto/OpenEmbedded build system.

I have played STM32MP157C-DK2 discovery board for a while, I would like to share what I learned about creating a recipe by Yocto/OpenEmbedded build systems.

Overview

The post of "OpenSTLinux - Creating a recipe for a git source tree" is split into few parts as:

1. Part 1 - Creating the recipe by devtool - this part describes how to use devtool to create a recipe from a source tree checked out from a git repository.
2. Part 2 - Using bitbake-layers to add the recipe to the build environment - this part describes how to use bitbake-layers to create a layer, populate the recipe to that layer, and finally add the layer to the build environment.

Let's start the first topic - Part 1 - Creating the recipe by devtool.