Prerequisites & host setup - Qualcomm Dragonwing Documentation

Set up your host computer before building or modifying the Qualcomm^® Linux kernel. The requirements below apply to both the Yocto-based and standalone build workflows.

Host computer requirements

Table: Minimum host requirements

Requirement	Value
Architecture	x86_64
CPU	Quad-core (Intel i7-2600 at 3.4 GHz or equivalent)
RAM	16 GB
Free disk space	300 GB (swap partition > 32 GB recommended for Yocto builds)
Operating system	Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Building on a virtual machine is supported but significantly slower. For VM setup instructions, see the Qualcomm Linux Virtual Machine Setup Guide.

Required tools

Table: Required tool versions

Tool	Minimum version
Git	1.8.3.1
Python	3.10.2
GCC	10.1
GNU Make	4.0
Kas	4.8

Install host packages

Run the following commands to install the required packages and the kas build tool:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential chrpath cpio debianutils diffstat \
    file gawk gcc git iputils-ping libacl1 locales python3 \
    python3-git python3-jinja2 python3-pexpect python3-pip \
    python3-subunit socat texinfo unzip wget xz-utils zstd

sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath

Restart your shell (or run source ~/.bashrc) so that the pipx binary is on your PATH, then install kas:

# kas 4.8 or later is required
pipx install kas

Optionally, download the kas-container script to run builds inside a Docker container on any Linux distribution:

wget -qO kas-container \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/siemens/kas/refs/tags/5.1/kas-container
chmod +x kas-container

Configure locales

sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Configure git

git config --global user.email <your-email>
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

# Recommended settings to handle large repositories
git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
git config --global http.maxRequestBuffer 1048576000
git config --global http.lowSpeedLimit 0
git config --global http.lowSpeedTime 999999

Standalone kernel development prerequisites

The standalone build workflow uses the kmake-image Docker container to provide the cross-compilation toolchain, systemd ukify, and image-packaging scripts. Docker must be installed on the host before running a standalone build.

Install Docker CE

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ca-certificates curl gnupg

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg \
    | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" \
    | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Add your user to the docker group

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

Verify the installation

docker run --rm hello-world

The kmake-image container build and shell alias setup are covered in Build the kernel without Yocto.

Repository access

The Qualcomm Linux kernel and meta-qcom layer are publicly hosted on GitHub and require no special credentials:

Kernel source: https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/kernel
meta-qcom layer: https://github.com/qualcomm-linux/meta-qcom

​Host computer requirements

​Required tools

​Install host packages

​Configure locales

​Configure git

​Standalone kernel development prerequisites

​Install Docker CE

​Add your user to the docker group

​Verify the installation

​Repository access

Host computer requirements

Required tools

Install host packages

Configure locales

Configure git

Standalone kernel development prerequisites

Install Docker CE

Add your user to the docker group

Verify the installation

Repository access