Yocto supports several Linux host distributions, and each Yocto release will document a list of the supported ones. Although the use of a supported Linux distribution is strongly advised, Yocto is able to run on any Linux system if it has the following dependencies:
- Git 1.8.3.1 or greater
- Tar 1.27 or greater
- Python 3.4.0 or greater
Yocto also provides a way to install the correct version of these tools by either downloading a buildtools-tarball or building one on a supported machine. This allows virtually any Linux distribution to be able to run Yocto, and also makes sure that it will be possible to replicate your Yocto build system in the future. The Yocto Project build system also isolates itself from the host distribution's C library, which makes it possible to share build caches between different distributions and also helps in future-proofing the build system. This is important for embedded products with long-term availability requirements.
This book will use the Ubuntu 16.04 Long-Term Stable (LTS) Linux distribution for all examples. Instructions to install on other Linux distributions can be found in the Supported Linux Distributions section of the Yocto Project Reference Manual, but the examples will only be tested with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
To make sure you have the required package dependencies installed for Yocto and to follow the examples in the book, run the following command from your shell:
$ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib build-essential chrpath socat libsdl1.2-dev xterm bmap-tools make xsltproc docbook-utils fop dblatex xmlto cpio python python3 python3-pip python3-pexpect xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping python-git bmap-tools python3-git curl parted dosfstools mtools gnupg autoconf automake libtool libglib2.0-dev python-gtk2 bsdmainutils screen libstdc++-5-dev libx11-dev
You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.
The example code in the book can be accessed through several GitHub repositories at https://github.com/yoctocookbook2ndedition. Follow the instructions on GitHub to obtain a copy of the source in your computer.
You will also need to configure the Git revision control software as follows:
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]" $ git config --global user.name "Your Name"