Creating a Custom Yocto Layer for Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

I'm planning to create my own E-paper device based on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W.
In a previous post, I downloaded the existing Yocto source to create a base image for my own Raspberry Pi image.

To start creating a truly custom image, I'll add my own Meta Layer.
While you could modify existing layers like Poky, meta-raspberrypi, or other meta-* layers, doing so makes future maintenance difficult.

Therefore, I've created my own manageable layer to house all modifications. This way, simply adding this meta-layer to the existing Poky setup will result in my custom image.

Bitbake has a command called create-layer.
Using this command, you can easily create a skeleton layer.

Add a skeleton layer
shell

If you check rpi-build, you'll see that meta-jooojub-rpi has been created.
First, I'll perform a git init on the newly created state to prepare the base.
Since layers are typically managed according to the Yocto version, I usually use the Yocto version name for the branch name.

create base git project
shell

Next, you need to add your custom layer to the build.
Since the current meta-layer is located inside build, I'll delete the created meta-jooojub-rpi and clone it again inside poky for consistency.

clone in poky
shell

Now that meta-jooojub-rpi has been moved to poky, I'll add the layer using add-layer.

You can verify that the layer was added correctly by checking build/conf/bblayers.conf.

build/conf/bblayers.conf
shell

Even though meta-jooojub-rpi is currently empty, I'll perform a build test to ensure it's integrated properly.

If it builds without any issues, it's a success.

Next, I'll apply the necessary modifications from local.conf and bblayers.conf to meta-jooojub-rpi, making it buildable immediately without manual configuration.