Create a Yocto Image with OpenVINO™#

Note

Note that the YOCTO distribution is community-supported and has not been fully tested. You will need to set up and configure your host machine to be compatible with BitBake. For instruction on how to do that, follow the Yocto Project official documentation .

Step 1: Set up the environment#

  1. Clone the repositories.

    git clone https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
git clone https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-intel
git clone https://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
git clone https://github.com/kraj/meta-clang.git

  2. Set up the OpenEmbedded build environment.

    source poky/oe-init-build-env

  3. Add BitBake layers.

    bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-intel
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-openembedded/meta-oe
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-openembedded/meta-python
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-clang

  4. Verify if the layers have been added (optional).

    bitbake-layers show-layers

  5. Set up BitBake configurations.

    Include extra configuration in the conf/local.conf file in your build directory as required.

    # Build with SSE4.2, AVX2 etc. extensions
MACHINE = "intel-skylake-64"
# Enable clDNN GPU plugin when needed.
# This requires meta-clang and meta-oe layers to be included in bblayers.conf
# and is not enabled by default.
PACKAGECONFIG:append:pn-openvino-inference-engine = " opencl"
# Enable building OpenVINO Python API.
# This requires meta-python layer to be included in bblayers.conf.
PACKAGECONFIG:append:pn-openvino-inference-engine = " python3"
# This adds OpenVINO related libraries in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine"
# This adds OpenVINO samples in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine-samples"
# Include OpenVINO Python API package in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine-python3"

Step 2: Build a Yocto Image with OpenVINO Packages#

Run BitBake to build your image with OpenVINO packages. For example, to build the minimal image, run the following command:

bitbake core-image-minimal

Note

For validation/testing/reviewing purposes, you may consider using the nohup command and ensure that your vpn/ssh connection remains uninterrupted.

Step 3: Verify the Yocto Image#

Verify that OpenVINO packages have been built successfully. Run the following command:

oe-pkgdata-util list-pkgs | grep openvino

If the image build is successful, it will return the list of packages as below:

openvino-inference-engine
openvino-inference-engine-dbg
openvino-inference-engine-dev
openvino-inference-engine-python3
openvino-inference-engine-samples
openvino-inference-engine-src

Additional Resources#