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This page is intended for users who want to build Qualcomm Linux from scratch using the Yocto Project. It introduces the key Yocto concepts required for the build and walks through the overall workflow—from configuration to execution.

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Host System Requirements

  • Configuration
    • x86 machine
    • Quad-core CPU, for example, Intel i7-2600 at 3.4 GHz (equivalent or better)
    • 300 GB free disk space (swap partition > 32 GB)
    • 16 GB RAM
  • Tools
    • Git 1.8.3.1 or later versions
    • Tar 1.28 or later versions
    • Python 3.10.2 or later versions
    • GCC 10.1 or later versions
    • GNU Make 4.0 or later versions
    • Kas 4.8 or later versions
  • Permissions
    • sudo permission is required to run a few commands

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Host Setup

The following instructions are intended for use on a Ubuntu host system. The Yocto build is also supported on other distributions compatible with Yocto, but no validation is performed against them.
  • Install the following packages to prepare your host environment for the Yocto build 
    sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential chrpath cpio debianutils diffstat \
     file gawk gcc git iputils-ping libacl1 locales python3 python3-git \
     python3-jinja2 python3-pexpect python3-pip python3-subunit socat \
     texinfo unzip wget xz-utils zstd
  • Qualcomm uses the kas tool to sync and build the Yocto project. Use the following commands to install kas on your system
    On older Ubuntu versions, the kas version provided by the system package manager may be outdated. Using pipx is the recommended way to install kas.
     sudo apt install pipx

 # Restart your shell session after running this command to ensure
 # path changes take effect
 pipx ensurepath

 # The kas version is expected to be 4.8 or higher
 pipx install "kas>=4.8"

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kas configuration model

Qualcomm uses the kas tool to sync and build the Yocto project. The kas configuration model uses YAML files to declare which layers, machines, and distributions to include in a build. These YAML files are located in the meta-qcom/ci/ directory. A typical kas build command combines:
  • A machine YAML file (e.g., meta-qcom/ci/iq-9075-evk.yml)
  • A distribution YAML file (e.g., meta-qcom/ci/qcom-distro.yml)
kas shell meta-qcom/ci/<machine-name>.yml:meta-qcom/ci/<distro-name>.yml

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Selecting MACHINE, DISTRO, and image

The following table lists the supported MACHINE, DISTRO, and image recipe combinations. Use these values with the kas shell command to set up the build environment, then run bitbake <image recipe> to build.
MACHINE configurationSupported DISTROImage recipe
  • iq-615-evk.conf
  • iq-8275-evk.conf
  • qcm6490-idp.conf
  • rb3gen2-core-kit.conf
  • qcom-distro
  • qcom-distro-catchall
  • qcom-distro-selinux
  • qcom-distro-sota
  • qcom-multimedia-image
  • qcom-multimedia-proprietary-image
  • iq-9075-evk.conf
  • qcom-distro
  • qcom-distro-catchall
  • qcom-distro-selinux
  • qcom-distro-sota
  • qcom-multimedia-image
  • qcom-multimedia-proprietary-image

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Configuration Parameters

The following table describes the build tags for the current release. These values will be need to be substituted in the build commands.
Release TagIdentifier
meta-qcom-release-tagqli-2.0

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Build Instructions

  • Download Qualcomm’s Yocto layer meta-qcom. For the latest <meta-qcom-release-tag>, see Configuration Parameters. 
    git clone https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/meta-qcom -b <meta-qcom-release-tag>
  • Build the software image using kas. You define build targets based on machine and distro combinations. 
    kas build meta-qcom/ci/iq-9075-evk.yml:meta-qcom/ci/qcom-distro.yml:meta-qcom/ci/performance.yml
    In some host machines https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-virtualization may fail to clone. If you encounter this, configure Git to automatically redirect the URL to the working one:
    git config --global url."https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-virtualization".insteadOf \
    "https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-virtualization"
    To verify the redirect is in place:
    git config --global --get-regexp url
  • The build creates a single tarball containing all the relevant files to perform a full clean flash, including partition metadata, boot firmware, ESP partition and the rootfs. After a successful build, check if the qcomflash tarball exists in the build artifacts. The following examples use qcom-multimedia-proprietary-image as the image name. 
    ls build/tmp/deploy/images/iq-9075-evk/qcom-multimedia-proprietary-image-iq-9075-evk.rootfs.qcomflash.tar.gz

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Next steps

— To learn more about the supported combinations for building Qualcomm Linux, see Qualcomm Linux Release Notes. — For detailed build instructions, see Build from Source.