3. Building Debian Images Using Armbian

3.1. Introduction

Texas Instruments uses the Armbian build framework to generate Debian images for its platforms. Armbian describes itself to be a “base operating system”; that is, a build framework used to build Linux images optimized for Single-Board Computers.

AM64x-SDK-Download-page provides Debian images, but users can also build these, especially if users require something custom (such as different kernel configurations or default desktop environments).

3.2. Armbian Usage

This document provides high-level information about how to build Debian images for TI platforms, using Armbian. For a full list of options available for users to configure these images at build time, see Armbian Documentation.

3.2.1. Get Armbian

For the time being, TI’s fork of Armbian maintains support for TI platforms. Therefore, the first step is to fetch TI’s fork:

git clone https://github.com/TexasInstruments/armbian-build.git

3.2.2. Repository Structure

There are 4 files and directories of relevance to this high-level overview:

• configs/: This directory has configurations for boards, families, kernel configurations, desktop or CLI environments and so on. To find configuration files relevant to TI, see:

  • configs/sources/families/k3.conf

  • configs/kernel/linux-k3-current.conf

  • configs/kernel/linux-k3-rt-current.conf

• compile.sh: This is the script that the user should run for building Armbian images.

• lib/: This directory stores the scripts that do most of the work in building Armbian images.

• extensions/: This directory has files that define extension hooks. In Armbian, extension hooks are function signatures, which the build framework calls in the process of building an image. However, the build framework does not define these in lib/. Users can define these functions and integrate custom steps in the build process. TI has extensions/ti-debpkgs.sh extension file. To customize the build process, create a new file in this directory, and define your extension hooks there. Once the file is created, be sure to add the following line to board/family config file:

  enable_extension <extension_name>
  

• userpatches/: This directory stores files that define build parameters, user patches and so on.

3.2.3. Building Images

Armbian supports an interactive build process. To build interactively, go to TI’s Armbian fork you cloned, and use the following command:

./compile.sh

The build framework will then display dialog boxes. The user can use this to select the board, CLI or desktop environment, kernel configurations and so on.

To build the image non-interactively, specify all required Build Switches in the command:

./compile.sh [command] [switch...] [command...]

A full list of build switches is available at Build Switches.

For example, the following command builds the minimal non-RT Trixie image:

./compile.sh build BOARD=<target> BRANCH=current BUILD_MINIMAL=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no RELEASE=trixie SKIP_ARMBIAN_REPO=yes

For a list of targets corresponding to each board, refer:

Board	Target
AM62P	sk-am62p
AM62x	sk-am62b
AM62-LP	sk-am62-lp
AM62SIP	sk-am62-sip
AM64x	sk-am64b

output/images/ stores the built images. These images have a .img extension.