BKM: starting a new BSP

This is a practical 'quick start' on creating a new BSP. For detailed background and instructions on how to to formally do this, please see the BSP Developer's Guide [1] and the Kernel Manual [2]. This document is essentially a pragmatic distillation of those documents but oriented toward the mechanics of quickly getting the initial BSP infrastructure in place for a minimally functional new BSP.

Mostly it's a straightforward exercise:

• copy a meta-* subdirectory representing the metadata of the BSP
• add it as a layer and configure the build system to use it
• add or tweak the machine configuration and recipes in the layer to get things working
• create a specialized branch for the BSP in the kernel and add kernel metadata to customize it for the BSP

The final step above (dealing with the kernel) is actually the most time-consuming and least straightforward aspect of not only creating the initial BSP, but of maintaining it going forward, so much of this document will be dedicated to addressing that aspect of BSP creation/maintenance.

Starting Out

As mentioned in the BSP Developer's Guide, the easiest way to start a new BSP is to base it on a similar already-existing working BSP. For this guide, we'll essentially go through the steps used to create the BSP for the Fish River Island, which exists in its current form as meta-fishriver in the meta-intel repository.