Modifying core-image-minimal to only make rootfs

Question

I am working on an embedded project on Zedboard. I would like (at least for now) to use Bitbake only to produce proper rootfs. I use recipe core-image-minimal, as I need only limited amount of staff there. How can I "tell" it to not compile kernel, not make u-boot, etc. and focus on rootfs only?

Here is what I've done so far:

1. Created my build environment
2. Downloaded needed layers
3. Modified local.conf to add needed packages to rootfs

Then after typing

bitbake core-image-minimal

I get my rootfs, and all this unnecessary staff. How can I avoid it?

Answer 1

I recently had the same need to only build the rootfs with yocto, skipping other things such as kernel, uboot, image creation etc. There are many legitimate reasons to do so. Anyways, this is what you have to do:

bitbake core-image-minimal -c image_cpio

in krogoth, this will populate the rootfs directory in build/tmp/work/$MACHINE/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/ and create a rootfs.cpio file in build/tmp/deploy/images/$MACHINE/

in morty, the rootfs.cpio archives seem to be in build/tmp/work/$MACHINE/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/deploy-core-image-minimal-image-complete/