STEP 01 · TAG v0.1-yocto-boot

Yocto on the Arty Z7-20

// phase 1 · foundation · published [date]

The goal of this step

One small, verifiable win: a minimal custom Yocto image that boots to a login prompt on the Arty Z7-20 (Zynq-7000). Nothing fancy yet — the point is to stand up the build system and prove the board comes up, because everything else in AuraScope sits on top of this.

What I did

[ Chose pure Yocto + meta-xilinx vs. PetaLinux — and why. ]
[ Set up the layers and a minimal image target. ]
[ Built FSBL / bitstream / u-boot / kernel / rootfs into a boot image. ]
[ Flashed to SD, booted, confirmed serial console + login. ]

The tricky part

[ The one thing that actually cost time — a clock config, a missing device-tree node, a bitstream/u-boot mismatch. This is the section readers remember; be specific and honest. ]

# [ the handful of commands that matter — keep it copy-pasteable ]
git clone ...
source oe-init-build-env
bitbake core-image-minimal

Honest note: [ anything simulated, stubbed, or not-yet-ideal at this stage — state it plainly. ]

Result

[ Boots in N seconds to a prompt; image size; what works and what's deliberately left for later. ]

Code

Tagged at v0.1-yocto-boot.