[yocto] yocto 1.6 - beaglebone black - cape manager

[Denys Dmytriyenko]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2014 at 07:02:13PM -0300, Diego Sueiro wrote:
> > I'm build yocto 1.6, My hardware is beaglebone black I successfull
> > build system image. But I can't see cape manager.
> > I need them to use SPI - enable spidev -
> > http://elinux.org/BeagleBone_Black_Enable_SPIDEV .
> > What do i do to build yocto with a cape manager?
> 
> As far as I know, you have to use meta-beagleboard
> <https://github.com/beagleboard/meta-beagleboard> (almost 1 year without
> any new commit) as your BSP layer to get capemanager support with Yocto.
> Take a look here
> <https://github.com/beagleboard/meta-beagleboard/blob/dylan/common-bsp/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-mainline_3.8.bb>.
> The kernel version is 3.8.
> 
> Here we have good news of having capemanager support on mainline:
> http://beagleboard.org/blog/2014-08-27-device-tree-overlay-support-lands-upstream/
> 
> Here you have a beaglebord.org linux repo with capemanager support:
> https://github.com/beagleboard
> I don't know if there is any WIP to get this kernel compiled by Yocto/OE.

Hi,

[I was asked to provide additional comments to this topic - I'm the maintainer 
of meta-ti and the author of BeagleBone Black support in meta-yocto-bsp]

I see that Diego has pretty much covered all the basics above. I'll just add 
few clarifications and details...


There are few different OE/Yocto BSPs for BeagleBone Black:

1. meta-yocto-bsp provides "reference" BSPs for each of the supported 
architectures. One for ARM (BeagleBone Black), one for MIPS, PPC and x86.
The keyword is "reference", as it is based on the mainline kernel/bootloader 
and does not support any advanced features or anything not in the upstream 
mainline kernel - e.g. no capes, no power management, no hardware 
acceleration, no 3D, no PRU, etc. The purpose of this BSP is to have some 
basic out-of-box experience for the select hardware platforms within Poky to 
evaluate the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded framework, but not the specific 
hardware platforms. For proper and more comprehensive HW support users are 
directed to the corresponding official BSPs - meta-intel, meta-ti, meta-fsl 
(ARM, PPC), meta-amd, etc. etc.

2. meta-ti is the official Texas Instruments BSP that provides the latest WIP 
"staging" kernel and bootloader with most of the advanced features and 
peripheral support for the wider range of latest TI platforms, including 
BeagleBone Black. Most of the work in the "staging" area is being upstreamed, 
so it eventually appears in the mainline kernel and u-boot. It doesn't support 
capes on BBB, at least not yet - see below.

3. meta-beagleboard (now defunct) was a split-off from meta-ti few years ago 
to concentrate on the development of the BeagleBoard and BeagleBone specifics, 
such as capes. At the time it was based on 3.8 kernel and had large patchsets 
to add device tree overlays and cape management, among other things. Although, 
meta-beagleboard seems to be dead now, the work on the devtree overlays and 
cape manager has continued, thanks to Pantelis Antoniou - see the blog post on 
beagleboard.org, linked by Diego above.


The plan always was for meta-ti and meta-beagleboard to meet upstream, hence 
meta-ti will eventually have all the necessary pieces to support capes, once 
it lands upstream. Meanwhile, TI now concentrates on supporting all the other 
advanced features and upstreaming everything to mainline.

BTW, the kernel repo from Robert Nelson (the last link from Diego above) is 
now based on the TI "staging" kernel, i.e. the one provided by meta-ti, plus 
some additional patches not yet accepted upstream. I might look into adding a 
recipe to meta-ti to pull in that tree, but haven't decided yet...


If there are any questions remain, please find me on meta-ti mailing list at 
meta-ti at yoctoproject.org. Thanks.

-- 
Denys