Table of Contents

RDK Emulator

• Executes on x86-based platforms including virtualization environments such as Virtual Box and QEMU.
• Multiple build types - media client, hybrid etc
• Supports the RDK Browser startup application.
• Up to date with the RDK generic trunk and any x86-specific platform code.
• Built using Yocto and RDK build frameworks

Build Setup Instructions

Setting up the Host Environment

Host Requirements

...

Install OS - Ubuntu 16.04

...

Install the following packages for setting up your host VM:

$     sudo apt-get  install   build-essential gettext bison libfile-slurp-perl gawk libncurses-dev autoconf flex doxygen libtool automake  libpcre3-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev subversion minicom putty libssl-dev rpm python-pexpect python-svn python-argparse vim tofrodos meld dos2unix cmake uuid-dev ruby transfig libglib2.0-dev xutils-dev lynx-cur gperf autopoint  python-dulwich  python-dev curl vim diffstat texinfo chrpath openjdk-7-jre

Configure bash as default command interpreter for shell scripts:

$     sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

Select “No”
To choose bash, when the prompt asks if you want to use dash as the default system shell - select “No”

Also install the below list of packages for Yocto build:

$     sudo apt-get install sed wget cvs subversion git-core coreutils unzip texi2html texinfo libsdl1.2-dev docbook-utils gawk python-pysqlite2 diffstat help2man make gcc build-essential g++ desktop-file-utils chrpath libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mercurial autoconf automake groff

Configure Git:

Upgrade your Git version to 1.8.x or higher

On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, if you are unable to upgrade your git version using apt-get, then follow the below steps in order to upgrade  

Once git is installed, configure your name and email using the below commands

$          git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

$          git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Configure repo

In order to use Yocto build system, first you need to make sure that repo is properly installed on the machine:

$          mkdir ~/bin

$          PATH=~/bin:$PATH

$          curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo

$          chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Trivia: Repo is a repository management tool that is built on top of Git. Its main purpose is to help manage projects that consist of many Git repositories, it can also be used to manage uploads to the CMF Gerrit instance and automate aspects of the development workflow.

Repo does not replace Git, it simply aids management of projects that contain multiple Git repositories into a single local working directory. Git will still be used for local operation such as commits etc.

Repo manages this for you by means of an XML based Manifest file. The Manifest file defines which repositories the project uses and links to appropriate revisions of each git repository, i.e where the upstream repositories reside and where they should be cloned locally. It is the manifest.xml (or default.xml) that determines which Git repositories and revisions repo will manage. This manifest.xml file is hosted in a Git repository along with all the other git repositories.

Setting up .netrc for RDK emulator

CMF git uses https. This step prevents the password prompt every now and then during code checkout and build.

Create a file .netrc in home directory.

$          vi .netrc

The contents of the .netrc should be as follows:

machine code.rdkcentral.com login <gerrird_userid> password <gerrit_password>

Downloading Source Code & Building

The following commands fetches the source code of emulator using repo tool

$ mkdir emulator && cd emulator

$ repo init -u https://code.rdkcentral.com/r/manifests -m emulator.xml

...

• Example: For Code Iteration, use the following command:
• repo init -u https://code.rdkcentral.com/r/manifests -b < platform releases of your choice> -m emulator.xml

$ repo sync

$ source meta-cmf/setup-environment       

The above step configures and sets up your directory to start an appropriate build for hybrid or media client.

There are different kinds of builds listed. Please read the options and select the number of the build you need.

Next, you would need to initiate the build using the following command:

$ bitbake image

On Successful build, the ROOTFS (in vmdk format) would be available at the following reference location based on  your build type :

-       ${HOME}/emulator/<build folder name>/tmp/deploy/images/(Build Type)

...

Note: The qt3d repo has changed and this causes older builds (10/24 and earlier) to fail while fetching qt. A fix can be applied by changing the repo in the qt3d recipe.

Before you build, you need to edit the file /meta-qt5/recipes-qt/qt5/qt3d_git.bb and set the QT_MODULE_BRANCH to "dev" instead of "master" as outlined below:

For more information regarding the change, please refer: https://github.com/meta-qt5/meta-qt5/commit/adeaa6128b665920eb98eb7c064f4aacbd74b873

...

Bringing up the Emulator on Virtual Box

...

• Use fdisk to create your new hard disk partition

Review the description of the steps during fdisk operation below and the following screenshot for reference before proceeding.

• Use fdisk to create your new hard disk partition
• Use the command "n" to add a new partition
  

• Select partition type as the suggested default "p" for primary partition

• Set your partition number as the suggested default. In the example case: 1

• Press "Enter" key for First sector & Last sector prompts
• Select the command "p" to print the partition table on screen for review

• Select the command "w" to write the partition table to disk and exit fdisk

...

STEP 5: Copy a Single Program Transport stream to your file system to be used for emulator video playback.

• Pre-requisite to the step is assumed that /ext_hdd is already mounted with the external hard disk partition on your emulator VM
• Copy your SPTS video file from your host machine to /ext_hdd folder on the emulator VM 
• Note: The following command is performed from your Host Machine

...

• Back on your emulator VM, create a link in /opt/www/ to point to the external hard drive at its mount point /ext_hdd

...

Logging into your VM

As described in the previous section, you can log in to your emulator VM from your Host Machine using the ssh command.

...