4.3.7. Application Development SDK

In the general workflow figure, the output labeled "Application Development SDK" represents an SDK. The SDK generation process differs depending on whether you build an extensible SDK (e.g. bitbake -c populate_sdk_ext imagename) or a standard SDK (e.g. bitbake -c populate_sdk imagename). This section takes a closer look at this output:

The specific form of this output is a set of files that includes a self-extracting SDK installer (*.sh), host and target manifest files, and files used for SDK testing. When the SDK installer file is run, it installs the SDK. The SDK consists of a cross-development toolchain, a set of libraries and headers, and an SDK environment setup script. Running this installer essentially sets up your cross-development environment. You can think of the cross-toolchain as the "host" part because it runs on the SDK machine. You can think of the libraries and headers as the "target" part because they are built for the target hardware. The environment setup script is added so that you can initialize the environment before using the tools.

Notes

All the output files for an SDK are written to the deploy/sdk folder inside the Build Directory as shown in the previous figure. Depending on the type of SDK, several variables exist that help configure these files. The following list shows the variables associated with an extensible SDK:

This next list, shows the variables associated with a standard SDK: