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This page provides the step-by-step procedures for OEMs to adopt RDK-B. OEM layer sits on top of the SoC layer and later adds support for software for boot-up, image updates, and APIs to handle custom drivers. These could be specializations to the generic or SoC components or complementary software components provided by the OEM to create a fully functional set-top device.

On this Page:

Before You Begin

Bringing up RDK by OEM- Approach

Procedure for OEM porting of RDK

Before You Begin

RDK License

SoC vendors are advised to get into an agreement with RDK Management LLC to obtain the free license so as to use the complete RDK Code base in their platform. More details about license is available at https://rdkcentral.com/licenses/ . Please email info@rdkcentral.com if you have additional questions about licenses or membership


Bringing up RDK by OEM- Approach

This section will detail the recommended step by step procedure of adopting RDK by OEM

Product Specifications

The first step to get a fully functional product is to define the product features and see if they meet the standard requirements. See here to know what are all the features available in RDK-B and can implement based on your requirement. OEM can use this as a guide while engineering the RDK OEM platform.OEM can cross check the expected features/specifications with the capabilities of the SoC platform being used and can finalize the features supported by the product.

RDKM On-boarding

RDKM provides a collaboration zone facility for SoCs to facilitate easier engineering of RDK based devices. The collaboration zone will help SoCs to work with OEMs, RDKM and any 3rd party along with a common space to develop & integrate, manage and verify the device. The zone includes facilities for code management, a confluence based RDK Wiki for knowledge management & sharing, a JIRA for tracking activity progress, issues as well as to manage the activities, a test setup to validate devices. The access restrictions implemented will help the collaboration zone to be accessible only for the authorized personnel thereby guarding any sensitive information related to SoC/OEM/Third party.

Roles & Responsibilities

A table explaining the roles & responsibilities of OEM & RDKM in the collaboration zone is given below:


#

Activity

Owner

Remarks

1

OEM Collaboration zone creation

RDKM

RDKM will setup Collaboration space, access restrictions

2

JIRA Project creation

OEM

JIRA project. OEM will be the owner of the JIRA project.

3

SoC / OEM meta -layer creation in collaboration zone

OEM/RDKM

RDKM will create the space and SoC/OEM push the code changes

4

Device specific HAL repo creation

OEM

Create necessary device specific HAL implementation for porting RDK into Accelerator

5

Share SoC SDK Artifacts

RDKM

Details which SDK version to be used. RDKM will support the integration with OEM libraries

6

Manifest creation

OEM

Manifest for building the accelerator

7

Remote control integration(only for RDK licensee)

RDKM/OEM

RDKM approved RCU’s are enabled by default

8

UI/UX(only for RDK licensee)

RDKM/OEM

Comes with pre-integrated UI’s, OEM and RDKM will discuss on the default UI

9

Create Accelerator build from CMF GIT

OEM / RDKM

Both teams work together to build Accelerator from CMF.

10

Provide Devices to RDKM team

OEM


11

Device flashing instructions/recovery mechanisms

OEM

OEM should share the device flashing instruction.

12

Sanity, Functionality Testing & automation tests

RDKM/OEM

RDK Certification Suite(only for RDK licensee)

13

Monthly release & tagging

OEM

Monthly tagging and release with stakeholders along with test results


It is expected that OEM has already obtained a license to work with RDKM (If not, OEM can send a mail to support@rdkcentral.com to start off with the discussions) .

With this user account, an INFRA ticket can be raised at https://jira.rdkcentral.com to create a collaboration repo. The ticket should contain the details for

  • Location of collaboration zone
  • Collaboration zone access groups/members


OEM users can sign up at https://wiki.rdkcentral.com/signup.action to create a user account in RDK. For any issues faced, a mail can be sent to support@rdkcentral.com


An INFRA ticket needs to be raised at https://jira.rdkcentral.com with the below details

  • Collaboration zone/repo name
  • User name and the mail id's of the members to whom the access is needed
  • OEM collaboration zone/repo owner name

For any issues faced, a mail can be sent to support@rdkcentral.com

An INFRA ticket needs to be raised at https://jira.rdkcentral.com to create a JIRA project for OEM.  Once approvals are received along with required access restrictions, the project will be created. . For any issues faced, a mail can be sent to support@rdkcentral.com


To get a Git repository a request needs to be raised to CMF team using the CMFSUPPORT ticket at https://jira.rdkcentral.com . Once approvals are received along with required access restrictions, the repo will be created. Any changes in merge permissions can be requested in same ticket. For creating any specific branches in the repo, another ticket in the same CMFSUPPORT can be raised. For any issues faced, a mail can be sent to support@rdkcentral.com .

Once the git repo is created, it can be accessed at https://code.rdkcentral.com


An INFRA ticket needs to be raised at https://jira.rdkcentral.com to get access to SDK artifacts.  Once approvals are received along with required access restrictions, the access should be in place. For any issues faced, a mail can be sent to support@rdkcentral.com

Product Engineering

Once the product features are decided, the device engineering can be started. OEM needs to decide on the hardware layout that incorporates OEM components to the SoC board. The device will be categorized as Low Profile and High Profile devices based on the hardware capabilities. In a low profile device, 4k support might be optional but it is expected to have 4k support in a high profile device.

Device Firmware

OEM can make use of the below details to start developing a Yocto build to engineering the device firmware builds based on RDK Yocto build setup.

Yocto based RDK builds are flexible enough to easily accommodate SoC & OEM changes. The starting point for the Yocto builds is 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 need 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 OEM specific manifests are given below

#

File

Remarks

1

Device Specific Manifest

This is the starting point of the build and is specific to a device. Usually, it contains references to other manifest files which will be having a specific set of repos

2

OEM manifest

This manifest contains meta layer details of OEM( which might or might not be generic across OEMs multiple devices ) and, optionally, some OEM specific repos

3

SoC manifest

This manifest contains meta layer details of SoC and, optionally, some SoC specific repos

4

RDK-B 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

5

OE layers manifest

This manifest has details of the basic Yocto Open Embedded layers

6

Third-party apps

This manifest can contain meta layers related to their applications which are chosen by OEM


For more details on getting RDK-B ported to an OEM device, please refer to the links RDK-B OEM Specific Porting and Guideline for SoC and OEM Vendors

SoC/OEM meta-layer creation

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

$ yocto-layer create mylayer

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

The device (machine) configuration file shall include the corresponding include (.inc) file to get machine configuration details.


Adding a new machine to Yocto involves the following:

Create a new layer that will hold all the recipes and machine configurations for the new SoC/OEM

the yocto-layer command is not enabled by default,  If you want to add a new layer using the "yocto-layer" script, you need to first download the poky and put it in your codebase, and run the script to create a new folder.

You can download poky from git using :               

$  git clone https://github.com/seife/yocto-poky.git 

Use the yocto-layer create sub-command to create a new general layer.

$ yocto-layer create mylayer <specify the layer which you need to be created>

Eg :

Please enter the layer priority you'd like to use for the layer: [default: 6] 6
Would you like to have an example recipe created? (y/n) [default: n] n
Would you like to have an example bbappend file created? (y/n) [default: n] n
New layer created in meta-new-layer.

There shall be a separate device (machine) configuration file (.conf) for each device for the particular chip family for which the layer is intended for.

For Eg: A layer "meta-rdk-oem-OEM-X-SOC-Y" means this layer shall be able to build any devices manufactured by  OEM "X" with all variants of SoC "Y" like Y-1,Y-2 etc

The device (machine) configuration file shall include the corresponding include (.inc) file to get machine configuration details.

Adding the Machine Configuration File for the new SoC/OEM

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

The most important variables to set in this file are as follows:

  • TARGET_ARCH (e.g. "arm")
  • PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel (see below)
  • MACHINE_FEATURES

You might also need these variables:

  • KERNEL_IMAGETYPE (e.g. "zImage")
  • IMAGE_FSTYPES (e.g. "tar.gz")
  • The default configuration is defined in meta-rdk/conf/distro/rdk.conf and it should be overwritten by the machine-specific conf file.

Adding a Kernel for the Machine

The OpenEmbedded build system needs to be able to build a kernel for the machine. We need to either create a new kernel recipe for this machine or extend an existing recipe. We can find several kernel examples in the source

The directory at meta/recipes-kernel/linux that you can use as references. If you are creating a new recipe, the following steps need to be done,

  • Setting up a SRC_URI.
  • Specify any necessary patches
  • Create a configure task that configures the unpacked kernel with a defconfig.

If you are extending an existing kernel, it is usually a matter of adding a suitable defconfig file. The file needs to be added into a location similar to defconfig files used for other machines in a given kernel.

A possible way to do this is by listing the file in the SRC_URI and adding the machine to the expression in COMPATIBLE_MACHINE:

  • COMPATIBLE_MACHINE = '(qemux86|qemumips)'

Adding Recipe for SoC/OEM

The following kind of recipes can be added to SoC/OEM layer. The recipes shall be grouped as described in slide “BSP Reference Layer”

  • recipes (.bb) to build Kernel
  • recipes(.bb)  to build SDK
  • Kernel patches (SoC/OEM specific - if any)
  • SDK patches (SoC/OEM specific - if any)
  • Any SoC/OEM specific scripts or files which need to be installed in RF

Creating packages for building images 

Create a custom package group for the SoC/OEM which shall list all the recipes that are required for this image.

For example, the following recipe can be appended to the broadband package group.

meta-rdk-soc-<soc>/meta-<processor_name>/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-rdk-ccsp-broadband.bbappend:
RDEPENDS_packagegroup-rdk-ccsp-broadband_append += " \
    ccsp-cr \
    rsync \
    utopia \
    lighttpd \
.
.
.
"


Create a custom image for the required SoC/OEM. For example:

meta-rdk-<soc>/meta-<processor_name>/recipes-core/images/<image>.bb:
IMAGE_INSTALL += " \
    packagegroup-<soc/oem specific packages> \
    "
"

Adding your own custom layer

Use the yocto-layer create sub-command to create a new layer.

$ yocto-layer create newlayer

Add this to ./meta-rdk/conf/bblayers.conf.sample.

Recipes can be placed inside recipes-< > folders. There can be a configuration file inside conf/ for layer-specific configuration and classes folder for keeping information that is useful to share between metadata files.


TDK


RDKM offers an in-house Test & certification suite that facilitates OEMs to get their  Set-top product certified as RDK Compliant devices.

For more details on TDK refer: TDK-B Documentation

SDK Releases


Once the RDK bring-up in SoC is completed, the vendor needs to plan on the delivery of the software to OEM vendors. This usually happens in 2 ways:

HAL + SDK binary

In this approach will make use of the RDK Artifactory server. Artifactory server is a Repository Manager that functions as a single access point organizing all the binary resources including proprietary libraries, remote artifacts, and other 3rd party resources. It is a secure and restricted server, only collaboration members will have access to this server. OEM secure information can be hosted on the Artifactory server.

OEM vendors will work in collaboration with the SoC vendor. SoC vendor can define a HAL layer, share the source of HAL & yocto meta layer that can be stored in RDK CMF Git repository,share the SDK binary that can be stored in RDK Artifactory (Shared only from authorized SoC vendors who will work in collaboration with the OEM vendor) and then publish necessary documentation on how to build the OEM SDK. OEM vendors can use the git/ Artifactory for periodic updates (for releases) or for bug fixes. All the source code, binary and documentation will be strictly access restricted and access will be allowed only for authorized personnel by OEM vendors.


The artifactory server can be accessed by adding the Artifactory details and login credentials in the .netrc file, just like it is done for normal git repositories. A sample is given below:

machine your.artifactory.host
login YOUR_ARTIFACTORY_USERNAME
password YOUR_PASSWORD_OR_KEY_OR_TOKEN

Complete source code

In this approach, OEM vendors will work in collaboration with the SoC vendor. SoC vendor can define a HAL layer, share the source of HAL & yocto meta layer that can be stored in RDK CMF Git repository, and then publish necessary documentation on how to build the OEM SDK.OEM vendors can use the git/ Artifactory for periodic updates (for releases) or for bug fixes. All the source code, binary and documentation will be strictly access restricted and access will be allowed only for authorized personnel by OEM vendors.

For both approaches, the RDKM collaboration zone will be used with strict access restrictions.

Collaboration with OEMs

After a successful bring-up of RDK on the SoC platform, the next step will be to allow SoCs to work with OEMs to get a device based on the SoC platform. RDKM offers collaboration space for OEMs which would help OEMs to collaborate with SoC and RDK teams (as well as any 3rd party) in their journey to engineering a successful RDK product. RDKM collaboration zone includes features like (but not limited to) CMF facility to maintain build manifests as well as SoC/OEM specific code, SoC SDK artifact storage facility, JIRA & RDK Wiki spaces, integration with Test & Certification suites, monthly & release tagging, etc.

Please refer to RDKM On-boarding for more details on facilities available for SoCs and OEMs as part of the collaboration zone. In short, it will include:

  • Access restricted Git repositories and Artifactory servers
  • Access restricted Confluence and JIRA spaces for Management and Documentation
  • Access to RDKM support as well as extended documentation
  • Access to test & certification support 


Procedure for OEM porting of RDK

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