With packages we mean install packaged software, i.e. packaged into a deb. This as opposed to building/installing on Edison itself, or cross-compiling (using the SDK).
Packages are built using bitbake.
deb format, you can install packages originating from Debian/Ubuntu. In general this is not the case. Dependencies, bitness, location of libraries all have to match. Best is build packages using bitbake as they will match the actual Edison image. If you really must use Debian / will not build yourself, consider installing a containerized Debian image.Package names roughly follow Ubuntu / Debian scheme. In Yocto bitbake builds packages using recipes and recipes are organized into layers. meta-intel-edison already uses quite a few layers. These are downloaded and configured by the setup.sh and end up in out/linux64/build/conf/bblayers.conf. If needed you can add more layers manually.
If you are looking for a particular recipe, goto the OpenEmbedded Layer Index. If you found it, you can decide to either add the layer (if not already there) or copy the recipe to meta-intel-edison.
If you didn’t find it, you could write one yourself. If you think it is useful to others, don’t forget to send a PR. recipes added to meta-intel-edison-distro eventually are indexed by the OpenEmbedded Layer Index.
To build:
bitbake your-recipe
When the build is done, you can find your package(s) (and possibly it’s dependencies) at out/linux64/build/tmp/deploy/deb/corei7-64/ (or at the build directory /out/linux64/build/tmp/work/corei7-64-poky-linux/your-packge/version/deploy-debs/corei7-64/`).
When you know which packages to install, copy them to Edison and use dpkg -i your-package*.deb.
However, it may be much more convenient to build a repository containing all your built packages. And use Edison’s package manager apt / aptitude to install what you need.
imageAdd your-recipe to meta-intel-edison/meta-intel-edison-distro/recipes-core/images/edison-image.bb and it will be built and added to your custom image.
© 2018 Ferry Toth