Extend Image with Additional Functionality

There are several ways to enable and add more functionality to an image than what’s included by the image recipe. The functionality is enabled by modifying the build_dir/conf/local.conf file.

Image Features

Several predefined packages can be enabled by using the EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES variable in the local.conf file. More information about this variable and the features that are available can be found in the Image Features section in the Yocto reference manual. As an example, the OpenSSH SSH server can be installed by adding ssh-server-openssh to the variable.

EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES = "debug-tweaks ssh-server-openssh"

Additional Packages

The Yocto project includes a lot of recipes for different packages and utilities. Some of them are included in the recipe for the image you are building, but more can be installed into the root file system by adding them to the IMAGE_INSTALL_append variable in local.conf.

Get a list of available packages in your Yocto setup by running bitbake as below.

bitbake -s > all_recipes.txt

In the example below e2fsprogs (file system utilities) and parted (manipulates partition tables) has been added to the variable. Please note that IMAGE_INSTALL_append must start with a space character as in the example below.

IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " e2fsprogs parted"