Device platform

How to Add a New kas Platform to meta-pantavisor

In the meta-pantavisor project, a kas platform file is a YAML configuration that defines a complete set of Yocto layers required for a specific family of devices. This typically includes vendor-provided Board Support Package (BSP) layers, as well as any other custom or required layers.

This system simplifies build configurations by grouping all necessary layers into a single, reusable file.

Before You Start: We already have a substantial number of platforms defined in meta-pantavisor. Before creating a new one, please check if a suitable platform already exists:

Example: Adding the Toradex NXP Platform

For this guide, we’ll walk through adding support for the vendor Toradex and their NXP-based boards.

1. Identify Vendor Layers

First, you must identify all the Yocto layers the vendor requires for the target boards. A good place to start is the vendor’s official documentation.

In this case, Toradex provides this information in their developer documentation. From their repo manifest, we can see the required layers for NXP boards are:

  • meta-toradex-bsp-common
  • meta-toradex-nxp
  • meta-freescale
  • meta-freescale-distro
  • meta-freescale-3rdparty

2. Create the Platform YAML File

With the layer information, we can create our new platform file.

  1. Create a new file in the kas/platforms/ directory. We will name it toradex-nxp.yaml.
  2. A key feature of kas is reusability. Looking at the required layers, we see that the Freescale layers are already defined in the existing freescale.yaml platform file. We can include this file to avoid duplicating definitions.
  3. Add the new, Toradex-specific layers under the repo: key.

Add the following content to toradex-nxp.yaml:

header:
  version: 16
  includes:
    # Include the existing freescale layers to avoid duplication
    - kas/platforms/freescale.yaml

# Add the new Toradex-specific layers
repo:
  meta-toradex-bsp-common:
    path: layers/meta-toradex-bsp-common
    # Note: URLs are just plain strings, do not use Markdown
    url: "https://git.toradex.com/meta-toradex-bsp-common.git"
    branch: scarthgap-7.x.y

  meta-toradex-nxp:
    path: layers/meta-toradex-nxp
    url: "https://git.toradex.com/meta-toradex-nxp.git"
    branch: scarthgap-7.x.y

Important: Always make sure the path, url, and branch are correct. The branches should match the Yocto release you are targeting (e.g., scarthgap).

3. Add Platform-Specific Configuration (Optional)

Some platforms require specific variables to be set in the Yocto build/conf/local.conf file. You can inject these settings directly from your platform file using the local_conf_header key.

For example, the raspberrypi.yaml platform needs to add several configuration flags:

LICENSE_FLAGS_ACCEPTED += "synaptics-killswitch"
RPI_USE_U_BOOT = "1"
ENABLE_UART = "1"

This is done by adding the following to the raspberrypi.yaml file:

local_conf_header:
  platform-raspberrypi: |
    LICENSE_FLAGS_ACCEPTED += "synaptics-killswitch"
    RPI_USE_U_BOOT = "1"
    ENABLE_UART = "1"

If your new platform (like the Toradex NXP) requires similar default settings, you can add a local_conf_header block to your toradex-nxp.yaml file in the same way.