Powering flexibility with layers

Poky contains metadata spread over configuration definition files such as machine and distro files, classes, and recipes, covering everything from simple applications to full graphical stacks and frameworks. There are multiple places that BitBake can load metadata collection from, which are known as metadata layers.

The biggest strength of using layers is the ability to split metadata into logical units, which enables users to pick only the metadata collection needed for a project.

Using metadata layers enables us to do the following:

• Improve code reuse
• Share and scale work across different teams, communities, and vendors
• Increase the Yocto Project community’s code quality, as multiple developers and users focus together on a particular metadata layer that is of interest to them

We can configure the system for different reasons, such as the need to enable/disable a feature or change build flags to enable architecture...