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Set up your host computer before building or modifying the Qualcomm® Linux kernel. The requirements below apply to both the Yocto-based and standalone build workflows.

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Host computer requirements

Table: Minimum host requirements
RequirementValue
Architecturex86_64
CPUQuad-core (Intel i7-2600 at 3.4 GHz or equivalent)
RAM16 GB
Free disk space300 GB (swap partition > 32 GB recommended for Yocto builds)
Operating systemUbuntu 22.04 LTS
Building on a virtual machine is supported but significantly slower. For VM setup instructions, see the Qualcomm Linux Virtual Machine Setup Guide.

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Required tools

Table: Required tool versions
ToolMinimum version
Git1.8.3.1
Python3.10.2
GCC10.1
GNU Make4.0
Kas4.8

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Install host packages

Run the following commands to install the required packages and the kas build tool: 
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

sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath
Restart your shell (or run source ~/.bashrc) so that the pipx binary is on your PATH, then install kas: 
# kas 4.8 or later is required
pipx install kas
Optionally, download the kas-container script to run builds inside a Docker container on any Linux distribution: 
wget -qO kas-container \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/siemens/kas/refs/tags/5.1/kas-container
chmod +x kas-container

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Configure locales

sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

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Configure git

git config --global user.email <your-email>
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

# Recommended settings to handle large repositories
git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
git config --global http.maxRequestBuffer 1048576000
git config --global http.lowSpeedLimit 0
git config --global http.lowSpeedTime 999999

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Standalone kernel development prerequisites

The standalone build workflow uses the kmake-image Docker container to provide the cross-compilation toolchain, systemd ukify, and image-packaging scripts. Docker must be installed on the host before running a standalone build.

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Install Docker CE

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ca-certificates curl gnupg

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg \
    | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" \
    | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

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Add your user to the docker group

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

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Verify the installation

docker run --rm hello-world
The kmake-image container build and shell alias setup are covered in Build the kernel without Yocto.

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Repository access

The Qualcomm Linux kernel and meta-qcom layer are publicly hosted on GitHub and require no special credentials: