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<Work in progress. only the skeleton added>

This page provides the details and guidance to the Operators on how to adopt RDK-B. The step by step procedure for an operator to get an RDK based Platform up and running is also described in detail.

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Operators can make use of the details available below to start developing a Yocto build to do the final additions of Operator specific changes to the device. This will help Operator to add their own final product features as well as Operator specific patches/changes.

Yocto Manifests

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Yocto based RDK builds are flexible enough to easily accommodate SoC / OEM / Operator / third party changes. The starting point for the Yocto builds are a manifest file. The manifest file is an xml file that contains details of the different open embedded Yocto build layers, meta layers , rdk as well as open source components that needs to be fetched during initial stages ( than during bitbake time ) as well as the URL locations from where the data can be pulled. A set of sample manifests that can be used as a template for developing Operator specific manifests are given below

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title Click here for more details on Yocto Manifests
# File Remarks 1 Device Specific Manifest This is the starting point of the build and is specific to a device/board . If the SoC/OEM has only one  target device /board, still it is recommended to maintain a different manifest for SoC/OEM for keeping it future-proof. Usually it contains references to other manifest files which will be having  specific set of repos 2 SoC Manifest This manifest contains meta layer details of SoC and , optionally, some SoC specific repos 3 OEM Manifest This manifest contains meta layer details of OEM and , optionally, some OEM specific repos 4 Operator Manifest This manifest contains meta layer details for operators and , optionally, some operator specific layers. 5 OE layers Manifest This manifest has details of the basic Yocto Open Embedded layers 6 RDK-V Manifest This manifest can contain meta layers specific to RDK & RDK-V and , for EXTERNALSRC cases, the RDK & RDK-V component repo details too. It might be supplemented with a conf file too 7 Third party Apps manifest This manifest can contain meta layers related to premium streaming applications which are chosen by Operator The default manifest repo in RDKM Git is at https://code.rdkcentral.com/r/#/c/manifests/ . Operator need to have their own manifest file in this location which will be mentioned in the 'Device specific manifest' - which is the starting point of builds for a particular target device

Operator meta-layer creation

To match the layered structure of Yocto builds, a Operator specific layer is used to include Operator changes and additions. Use the yocto-layer create sub-command to create a new general layer.

$ yocto-layer create mylayer

There shall be separate device (machine) configuration file (.conf) for each device for the particular chip family for which the layer is intended for. The general naming terminology for Operator layer is meta-rdk-<soc name>

The device (machine) configuration file shall include corresponding include (.inc) file to get machine configuration details.<ToDo>

Adding the Machine Configuration File for the new Operator

Each meta-* layer should have a conf folder containing the machine configuration we can select during 'source setup-environment' . Optionally it can also have a class/classes folder for keeping information that is useful to share between metadata files.

To add a machine configuration, you need to add a .conf file with details of the device being added to the conf/machine/ file. In the machine conf file the basic machine configuration should be defined.

Once the conf files are in place, the layer details need to be added to the corresponding package group file. Based on platform, the package group file will be grouped into multiple files with one bitbake fiile and multiple append files. Operator can add the Operator layer details to required package group append files applicable to the target device build to get the features into the final build<ToDo>

Operator Specific Apps

Operators will be having a range of Operator specific applications from simple generic device information apps to Operator specific content applications. RDK's Yocto based layered structure allows Operators to easily integrate, upgrade and maintain their apps in their RDK

Operator Specific UI

<ToDo>

Provisioning Support

Refer WebUI, a graphical user interface that is available to the connected devices.

Provisioning Support

Operator needs to add provisioning support in device so that Device provisioning can be done once deployed at customer premise. The steps for this varies based on platform as well as Operator type.

Provisioning support refers to the scenario such as when you launch Sample app on your mobile it takes to login page and so you have to login there, account there i.e. actually the app has to authenticate your login.<ToDo>

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is an inevitable part of the CPE life cycle. Operator, based on their disaster recovery strategy, could add support for this in the device. While there are some generic guidelines followed across industry, there is no single step that works for all. Operators could easily add their business logic to RDK as part of Operator firmware engineering

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