Writing a machine definition

Creating a new machine to be used by Poky is a straightforward task. It essentially provides the information needed for a machine to work. The bootloader, kernel, and hardware support drivers must be checked before starting to integrate the board into the BSP layer.

The Yocto Project supports x86-32, x86-64, ARM32, ARM64, MIPS, MIPS64, and PowerPC, representing the most currently used embedded architectures.

The prevailing set of variables used in a machine definition is as follows:

• TARGET_ARCH: This sets the machine architecture, for example, ARM and i586

• PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel: This overrides the default kernel (linux-yocto) in case you need to use a specific one

• SERIAL_CONSOLES: This defines serial consoles and their speeds

• MACHINE_FEATURES: This describes hardware features, so the needed software stack is included in the images by default

• KERNEL_IMAGETYPE: This is used to choose the kernel image type, for example, zImage and uImage

• IMAGE_FSTYPES...