Using Toaster with Toradex OE layers

Technical Support
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1

I would like to try use Toaster to build images for Toradex boards, is that possible?

I just recently installed Toaster in order to get familiar with that and decide if using it in our workflow would make any sense for us. Unfortunately, while I was excited about building image just in a few clicks in web interface, it seems that using Toaster with layers provided by Toradex might not be that easy.

First, I have installed Toaster according to official manual, selecting Yocto Project 2.2 “Morty” as release for my project. Toaster shows layers sourced from Openembedded Layer Index, so I just added meta-fsl-arm-extra, set machine to colibri-imx6 and built core-image-minimal image. So far so good.

Unfortunately, it seems that using layers like meta-toradex-demos is not so easy because of unsatisfied dependencies:

Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'angstrom-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'browser-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'fsl-demos', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'gnome-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'lxde-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'multimedia-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'networking-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'openembedded-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'qt4-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration
Layer 'toradex-demos' depends on layer 'qt5-layer', but this layer is not enabled in your configuration

It seems that these layers are not available in OE layer repository (at least not under the names specified in meta-toradex-demos), so I could not easily add them using Toaster. Is there any way to use Toradex specific layers?

I have also tried using repo tool as described on Toradex Developer Center, cloning LinuxImageV2.7, running export script and starting Toaster from that. Then I have selected Local Openembedded to use local layers, but Toaster does not find any layer except openembedded-core.

I have tried adding layers manually using web interface and absolute path to the folders, but pressing the “Import and add layer to project” does nothing. Using developer tools in Chrome I have found out that there is error response which should probably show, but does not. For example, when trying to add local meta-toradex-bsp-common layer, I got this:

{
  "current_url": "git://git.toradex.com/meta-toradex-bsp-common.git",
  "error": "hint-layer-exists-with-different-url",
  "current_id": 253
}

Since I am not yet very familiar with Toaster, I am not sure if I do it completely wrong or not.

Could you possibly tell me if it is possible to use Toaster with layers provided by Toradex and if so, how to do that? Thank you very much for any information.

2

Hi

We do not use Toaster at all, so no experience here.
I tried to setup a Toaster installation today.
So I cloned oe-core (morty) and bitbake (1.32) and started the Toaster deamon.

With this I was able to create an ‘Openembedded Morty’ project.
I added meta-angstrom, meta-freescale-3rdparty, and meta-freescale-demos through the ‘import layer’ interface, all the other layers I could add from the compatible layers list.

After some fiddling with the configuration (setting the machine and distro) I was able to start a build of angstrom-lxde-image (with a build failure in do_compile for lxapperance).

However my impression still is that I do not get any real value out of Toaster. While it is a nice gui adds an additional abstraction layer to the build process, e.g. I do not know where and what has to be changed the get my job done, additionally I don’t know how to keep/version control my build settings to get reproducible builds.

Max

3

Hi Max,

thanks for the answer. I have played around with Toaster bit more, but I was unable to get it work with Toradex layers as expected. This time builds had failed with different, even stranger errors.

I appreciate that you have shared your opinion on Toaster, you are definitely right about another abstraction layer and complicating some stuff. I do not have specific plans to use it in our development workflow, I am just curious about what it offers and I wanted to give it a try.

Do you use other OE/bitbake related tools that might be worth sharing information about? I have to admit that bitbake sometimes drives me bit crazy, so if you have any tips that would make my (and not just mine, basically anyone using it) life easier while working with it, I would be glad to know these.

Jakub