Yocto Project Consulting

How we can help with a Yocto Project

Project and layer architecture

A Yocto project that starts small can become difficult to understand as products, machines, hardware variants and customer-specific changes are added.

We can help structure layers, configuration and customisation so that the build remains understandable and maintainable as the product evolves.

Recipes and build integration

We can help integrate applications, services and system configuration into your Yocto build, including:

• recipes and .bbappend files
• dependency and packaging problems
• application and service integration
• custom image development
• BitBake configuration and overrides
• SDK and developer workflows
• CI and reproducible builds

BSP and hardware integration

Yocto work often crosses the boundary between the build system and the hardware platform. Problems that appear in the build can involve the bootloader, kernel, device tree or vendor BSP.

We can help with:

• BSP integration and customisation
• custom Yocto machines
• board bring-up
• U-Boot and boot-flow configuration
• Linux kernel integration
• device-tree development and debugging
• vendor BSP integration and maintenance

Yocto upgrades and migrations

Moving an established product to a newer Yocto release can expose years of accumulated assumptions, workarounds and customisations.

We can help identify what needs to change, separate obsolete customisation from genuine product requirements, and move the platform forward without simply recreating the old build on a new release.

We can also help teams migrating existing embedded Linux products from other build systems, including Buildroot, to Yocto.

Images, storage and software updates

Production image design often extends well beyond creating a root filesystem. The partition layout, bootloader, update mechanism and recovery strategy all need to work together.

Support can include:

• WIC image and partition layouts
• A/B root filesystem designs
• persistent application and user data
• recovery strategies
• OTA update integration
• SWUpdate or Mender integration
• bootloader update and rollback behaviour

Build and integration troubleshooting

Sometimes you do not need a large development project. You need to understand why something does not work.

We can investigate focused problems involving build failures, unexpected BitBake behaviour, dependencies, packaging, image generation, BSP conflicts, boot failures or interactions between different parts of the platform.

Typical reasons teams contact us

You might have:

• inherited a Yocto project that nobody fully understands
• outgrown the structure of an early prototype
• reached the limits of a vendor BSP
• fallen several Yocto releases behind
• a build or integration problem blocking a release
• started developing custom hardware
• decided to move an existing product from Buildroot to Yocto
• introduced multiple products or hardware variants
• reached the point where updates and long-term maintainability need to be designed properly

These are usually engineering problems rather than isolated BitBake questions. Solving them often means working across Yocto, bootloaders, kernels, device trees, filesystems and the wider embedded Linux platform.

Practical, hands-on engineering

Silicon Blade Consultants is led by Iain Menzies-Runciman, an Embedded Linux engineer with more than 30 years of Linux and Unix experience.

Our focus is hands-on engineering: working with your actual build and platform, investigating the problem, implementing changes and explaining the reasoning behind them to your engineering team.

The aim is not simply to get the next build through. It is to leave the project in a better state afterwards: easier to understand, easier to maintain and better prepared for future development.

More about Silicon Blade Consultants

Examples from our engineering work

Our technical articles cover practical problems encountered while developing Yocto and embedded Linux systems. They show the kind of investigation and engineering work that goes into solving problems on real products.

Browse all articles

Training and knowledge transfer

Sometimes the best way to improve a project is to strengthen the engineering team's own Yocto knowledge.

We provide structured Yocto training as well as mentoring and knowledge transfer while working alongside your engineers on real development work.

Explore Yocto training

Need help with a Yocto project?

Tell us what you are building, what is causing difficulty and where you need additional engineering support.

Discuss your Yocto project