I'm new to Yocto and Bitbake. I'm running my yocto machine through a qemu emulator on Ubuntu and attempting to use the meta-selftest layer to get a sense of how to install new layers. I have downloaded the meta-selftest files into the directory where the rest of the meta- directories are, and added the path to the meta-selftest directory to the bblayers.conf file. Running bitbake-layers show-layers command gives the output
layer path priority
==========================================================================
meta /home/[my name]/Documents/poky/meta 5
meta-poky /home/[my name]/Documents/poky/meta-poky 5
meta-yocto-bsp /home/[my name]/Documents/poky/meta-yocto-bsp 5
meta-selftest /home/[my name]/Documents/poky/meta-selftest 5
however, when I try to run bitbake meta-selftest I get the error:
Loading cache: 100%
Loaded 1294 entries from dependency cache.
ERROR: Nothing PROVIDES 'meta-selftest'
Summary: There was 1 ERROR message shown, returning a non-zero exit code.
What does this error mean? I checked meta-selftest's dependencies, and it doesn't have any, so I get the sense this error isn't saying there is a dependency issue, but I can't find any clear documentation on what this error is telling me. I get the vague sense it means that bitbake can't find meta-selftest, but show-layers contradicts that by listing it with the correct path.
Any help would be deeply appreciated.
-Patches
You don't bitbake a layer, you bitbake a recipe from that layer.
Try a bitbake test-empty-image for example. That is an image recipe provided by that layer.
Explore the meta-selftest directory and look for .bb files, the recipes. Those can be build using bitbake.
I recommend having a look at the quick start guide: http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/yocto-project-qs/yocto-project-qs.html