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Overview of Ice with Yocto

The Yocto Project allows you to create a custom Linux distribution for your embedded product. With ZeroC's meta layer for Yocto, you can easily include Ice for C++, Ice for Python and/or the Glacier2 service in your custom Linux distribution.

Development Boards

Ice was tested with the following boards and images:

Meta Layer

Refer to the README.md file in the zeroc-ice/meta-zeroc repository.

Installing the ZeroC Meta Layer

Simply clone the meta-zeroc git repository and add meta-zeroc to the BBLAYERS variable in your bblayers.conf file:

# Clone poky on branch thud
git clone -b thud git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky.git
 
# Clone meta-zeroc on branch thud
git clone -b thud git://github.com/zeroc-ice/meta-zeroc.git

BBLAYERS ?= " \
  /home/user/repos/poky/meta \
  /home/user/repos/poky/meta-yocto \
  /home/user/repos/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
  /home/user/repos/meta-zeroc \
  "

Using the ZeroC Meta Layer to install Ice

To include Ice in your image, add the package from the zeroc-ice recipe you wish to use to your local.conf file:

# Install Ice for C++ dynamic libraries and Ice for Python to image
IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " zeroc-ice zeroc-ice-python"
 
# Add the development package to the SDK
TOOLCHAIN_TARGET_TASK_append = " zeroc-ice-dev zeroc-ice-staticdev"
 
# Add the development package to the Native SDK
TOOLCHAIN_HOST_TASK_append  = " nativesdk-zeroc-ice-dev"

To ensure the correct Ice version is used you can set PREFERRED_VERSION_zeroc-ice in your local.conf file:

PREFERRED_VERSION_zeroc-ice = "3.7.4"

Setting up your cross development environment to use Ice

With the variables set in local.conf as shown above, you can generate an SDK for your image with the following command:

bitbake core-image-minimal -c populate_sdk 

Once complete, this SDK can be found in tmp/deploy/sdk. Execute the .sh file to install. By default your SDK will be installed into /opt/poky/<version>/. You can then source the cross-development environment as follows:

source /opt/poky/<version>/environment-setup-cortexa8hf-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi

Using IceSSL with Platform CAs

To use the IceSSL.UsePlatformCAs property you will need to install the ca-certificates package as part of your image. Since OpenSSL does not have its default CAfile (where IceSSL looks for the default platform CAs) set to the certificate bundle installed from ca-certifcates you will need to set an additional IceSSL property:

IceSSL.CAs=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

Using the Ice Sample Programs

Sample programs are available in the zeroc-ice/ice-demos repository:

git clone -b 3.7 https://github.com/zeroc-ice/ice-demos.git
cd ice-demos

The Ice demos for C++ and Python are located in the cpp11, cpp98 and python directories. Review the build instructions for more information.