Build Yocto x86_64 on ubuntu using Docker

You can follow below mentioned steps to build a Yocto image for an x86_64 using ubuntu docker. You can do the same steps on host as well, however build on docker container ensure that host setup is not disturbed.

Create a Docker Image

Create a new directory and add the following content to a file named Dockerfile

# Use a lightweight base image with common build tools
FROM ubuntu:20.04

# Set environment variables
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
    LANG=en_US.UTF-8 \
    LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

# Install required packages
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib \
    build-essential chrpath socat cpio python3 python3-pip \
    python3-pexpect xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping lz4 zstd sudo vim \
    locales && \
    locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 && \
    apt-get clean

# Set a working directory
WORKDIR /yocto

# Optional: Add a non-root user for builds
RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash yocto && echo "yocto:yocto" | chpasswd && adduser yocto sudo
USER yocto

# Expose a volume for build outputs
VOLUME /yocto/build

CMD ["/bin/bash"]

Build a Docker Image

docker build -t yocto-build-env .

Build Yocto Image inside docker

Create a new directory on host and git clone yocto repository

mkdir $HOME/yoctobld
cd $HOME/yoctobld
git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky.git
cd poky
git checkout kirkstone  # Replace with your desired branch
cd $HOME/yoctobld
docker run -it --rm --name yocto-build -v $(pwd):/yocto yocto-build-env
# now you will enter container
# change ownership to yocto to be able to build on host directories 
# use password yocto for sudo command below
sudo chown -R yocto:yocto poky
sudo chown -R yocto:yocto build
cd poky
source oe-init-build-env /yocto/build
bitbake core-image-minimal

The image will be generated under /yocto/build/tmp/deploy/images on container or $HOME/yoctobld/tmp/deploy/images on HOST