Access kernel sources

The Qualcomm^® Linux kernel source is publicly hosted on GitHub and requires no special credentials. Choose the access path that matches your build workflow. Table: Kernel branches

Branch	Yocto recipe	Use case
`qcom-6.18.y`	`linux-qcom_6.18.bb`	LTS production builds; recommended for SoC bring-up and integration
`qcom-next`	`linux-qcom-next_git.bb`	Upstream contribution and validation against the latest kernel

Yocto workflow

The Yocto workflow accesses the kernel through the meta-qcom layer. The kernel source is fetched automatically by BitBake during the build. Get access to the following repository:

meta-qcom (layer): https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/meta-qcom

Release tags follow the qli-<version> convention (for example, qli-2.0). For available tags, see the Qualcomm Linux release notes - Introduction.

Sync meta-layers with kas

Run the following commands from your workspace root directory. After syncing, the workspace contains a meta-qcom/ directory.

# Clone meta-qcom at the target release tag (e.g. -b qli-2.0)
git clone https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/meta-qcom \
    -b <release-tag>

To fetch and unpack the kernel source without running a full build, open a kas shell (replace rb3gen2-core-kit.yml with your machine YML) and run the unpack task:

kas shell meta-qcom/ci/rb3gen2-core-kit.yml:meta-qcom/ci/qcom-distro.yml

bitbake -c unpack linux-qcom

The kernel source is then available at:

build/tmp/work-shared/<machine>/kernel-source/

The kernel recipe and version are selected in meta-qcom/conf/machine/include/qcom-base.inc, which every machine configuration inherits:

# Provider for linux kernel
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = "linux-qcom"
PREFERRED_VERSION_virtual/kernel = "6.18%"

Select linux-qcom for LTS BSP or linux-qcom-next for mainline BSP, with PREFERRED_VERSION_virtual/kernel left empty.

The recipe files specify the exact SRCREV and SRCBRANCH for each release:

LTS recipe: recipes-kernel/linux/linux-qcom_6.18.bb
Mainline recipe: recipes-kernel/linux/linux-qcom-next_git.bb

For the full build steps, see Build the kernel using Yocto.

Standalone workflow

For the standalone workflow (kernel-only builds without a full Yocto image), clone the kernel repository:

git clone --branch qcom-6.18.y \
    https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/kernel.git kernel

To match the exact source revision used in a release build, check the SRCREV field in meta-qcom/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-qcom_6.18.bb. For the full build steps, see Build the kernel without Yocto.

Introduction

Architecture

Key Documents

Technologies

System

Release Notes

Yocto workflow

Sync meta-layers with kas

Standalone workflow

​Yocto workflow

​Sync meta-layers with kas

​Standalone workflow

Yocto workflow

Sync meta-layers with kas

Standalone workflow