how to add a third party library as a package in Yocto build

Question

I have a library that is not famous and there is no package available for this library https://github.com/dailab/libsml normally I install this library on my device by doing make install
How can I add this library as a package in my distribution of Linux. Just like i can add python or any other recipe in my local.conf

My local.conf looks like this

MACHINE ?= "phyboard-regor-am335x-1"

DISTRO ?= "yogurt"

# The following line disables the autostart of the phytec-qtdemo by
# default, but you can start the demo anytime using
#  $ systemctl start phytec-qtdemo.service
#SYSTEMD_AUTO_ENABLE_pn-phytec-qtdemo = "disable"

# That are the default values of bitbake.  Adapt these to your workspace and
# host preferences.
#DL_DIR = "${TOPDIR}/downloads"
#SSTATE_DIR = "${TOPDIR}/sstate-cache"

# License Handling
#  - Uncomment for i.MX6 proprietary GPU libraries
#LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST += "license-nxp_v14-june-2016_imx-gpu-viv"
#  - Uncomment for Freescale i.MX6 legacy VPU firmware blobs
#LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST += "license-freescale_v6-february-2015_firmware-imx"

# You can disable and enable FSTYPES as you wish. e.g. 'ext4'.
# This is ordering dependend. IMAGE_FSTYPES += "tar.gz" IMAGE_FSTYPES_append_mx6 = " sdcard ubifs" IMAGE_FSTYPES_append_ti33x
= " sdcard ubifs" IMAGE_FSTYPES_append_rk3288 = " sdcard"
#IMAGE_FSTYPES_append_ti33x = " emmc" DEPLOY_DIR = "${TOPDIR}/deploy"

# Select configuration UI for linux and barebox recipe. The openembedded
# default is 'menuconfig', 'nconfig' has more features.
#KCONFIG_CONFIG_COMMAND = "menuconfig" KCONFIG_CONFIG_COMMAND = "nconfig"

# Turn on debugging options of the kernel
# This is currently only supported for the TI kernel v4.4 DEBUG_BUILD_pn-linux-ti = "1"

# The default package class of the distro yogurt is 'package_ipk'. The first
# value is used as the package manager to build the image and sdk. To build
# also tar packages use
#PACKAGE_CLASSES = "package_ipk package_tar"

# Variable IMAGE_ROOTFS_EXTRA_SPACE from poky/meta/conf/documentation.conf:
#   Defines additional free disk space created in the image in Kbytes. By
#   default, this variable is set to '0'.
# This example line adds an additional 512 MiB of free space to the root
# filesystem:
#IMAGE_ROOTFS_EXTRA_SPACE = "524288"

# See http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.8/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#ref-features-image
#   "Through these variables, you can add several different predefined
#    packages such as development utilities or packages with debug information
#    needed to investigate application problems or profile applications EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES = ""
# - "Makes an image suitable for development (e.g. allows root logins without
#    passwords and enables post-installation logging)" EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "debug-tweaks"
# - "Installs debug symbol packages for all packages installed in a given
#    image."
#EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "dbg-pkgs"
# - "Installs debugging tools such as strace and gdb."
#EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "tools-debug"
#python-netserver for python cgi IMAGE_INSTALL_append = "mc nano openvpn apache2 dhcp-server lora-gateway lora-pkt-fwd spitools python avro-c python-kafka ntp python-netserver iptables"

#SDKMACHINE ?= "x86_64"

OE_TERMINAL = "auto" PATCHRESOLVE = "noop" BB_DISKMON_DIRS = "\
    STOPTASKS,${TMPDIR},1G,100K \
    STOPTASKS,${DL_DIR},1G,100K \
    STOPTASKS,${SSTATE_DIR},1G,100K \
    ABORT,${TMPDIR},100M,1K \
    ABORT,${DL_DIR},100M,1K \
    ABORT,${SSTATE_DIR},100M,1K"

CONF_VERSION = "1"

And my bblayers.conf looks like this:

# POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION is increased each time build/conf/bblayers.conf
# changes incompatibly
POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION = "2"

BBPATH = "${TOPDIR}"
BBFILES ?= ""

OEROOT := "/home/enilyser/sources/poky"
BBLAYERS  ?= " \
  ${OEROOT}/meta \
  ${OEROOT}/meta-poky \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-phytec \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-yogurt \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-cloud-services-master/meta-openstack \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-oe \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-networking \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-python \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-multimedia \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-qt5 \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-ruby \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-openembedded/meta-webserver \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-lora-net-master \
  ${OEROOT}/../meta-lorawan-master \
  "

Answer 1

You can use devtool to add the recipe if you are no 2.4+ version of yocto release

devtool add libsml https://github.com/dailab/libsml

it will create a recipe template

workspace/recipes/libsml/libsml_git.bb

this is nearly what you need but sometimes you have to tweak it a bit to ensure cross compiling.

in this case it builds and runs the tests, obviously when cross building we can build the tests but we can run them on build machine, so you have to disable that. you can do so in recipe or via a patch. e.g. via recipe you will change do_configure function to something like this

do_configure () {
    # Specify any needed configure commands here
    sed -i -e "s#@./test##g" ${S}/test/Makefile
}

may be change do_install as well so it can install the files you need on target

do_install () {
    install -d ${D}${libdir} ${D}${includedir}
    install -m 0644 ${B}/sml/lib/libsml.* ${D}${libdir}
    rm -rf ${D}${libdir}/libsml.o
    cp -R --no-dereference --preserve=mode,links ${S}/sml/include/* ${D}${includedir}
    install -D -m 0644 sml.pc ${D}${libdir}/pkgconfig/sml.pc
}

to build and see if all is ok

devtool build libsml

if all builds you can then apply the recipe to a layer of your choice ( say meta-oe )

devtool finish libsml meta-oe -f

Thats it, now you should see the recipe in meta-oe layer, you can try to build it

bitbake libsml