Creating a Custom Yocto Layer

Creating your own Yocto layer

For serious projects, we should avoid modifying vendor layers directly.

Instead, create a custom layer.

For example:

meta-my-project/
├── conf/
│   └── layer.conf
├── recipes-apps/
├── recipes-core/
├── recipes-kernel/
└── recipes-images/

The custom layer can contain project-specific modifications.

For example:

meta-my-project
      |
      +-- custom application
      |
      +-- configuration
      |
      +-- patches
      |
      +-- image recipe
      |
      +-- systemd services

This keeps our modifications separate from vendor code.

Why not modify vendor layers?

Suppose we directly modify:

meta-vendor/

Everything works.

Six months later we update the vendor BSP.

Our modifications may be overwritten or become difficult to merge.

Instead:

This makes upgrades much easier.