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BSP Tracker / Yocto layers
Whether your BSP layer has caught up with Yocto
A Yocto release lands every six months, and the question that decides the quarter is whether the vendor layer you depend on supports it yet. Layers lag, skip releases, or follow the silicon vendor calendar instead. This table records what each layer declares in conf/layer.conf, which branches exist, and when each last saw a commit.
Reading this table
The compatibility string is machine-readable. Every layer declares the Yocto releases it supports through LAYERSERIES_COMPAT in conf/layer.conf. The value quoted here is taken from the repository.
Declaring a release is not the same as shipping one. Several vendor layers follow their own BSP calendar rather than the Yocto cadence, so a declared release may have no branch behind it. Pin to a branch that exists.
A quiet master branch means little. Some layers leave master stale, or empty, while active work continues on a release branch. The activity column uses the most recently updated branch, not master alone.
Yocto release status
| Codename | Version | Released | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blacksail | 6.1 | Oct 2026 | 6 months (to Apr 2027) |
| Wrynose | 6.0 | Apr 2026 | LTS — to Apr 2030 |
| Whinlatter | 5.3 | Dec 2025 | EOL |
| Walnascar | 5.2 | May 2025 | EOL since Nov 2025 |
| Styhead | 5.1 | Oct 2024 | EOL |
| Scarthgap | 5.0 | Apr 2024 | LTS — to Apr 2028 |
| Kirkstone | 4.0 | May 2022 | EOL — was LTS |
| Dunfell | 3.1 | Apr 2020 | EOL |
Vendor BSP layer health
Activity
- Active
- A commit within the last 30 days on the branch we checked.
- Slow
- Last commit between one and four months ago.
- Stale
- No commit in over four months. Often the work has moved to another branch.
Layer type
- vendor
- Maintained by the silicon vendor, usually on their own BSP calendar.
- community
- Maintained in the open, usually following the Yocto release cadence.
| Layer | Declares compat | Newest branch | Activity | In practice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| meta-intel vendor | wrynose | wrynose | Slow last commit 2026-06-10 | Maintained by Intel inside the Yocto Project, so it tracks Yocto’s cadence exactly: a branch per release, cut on schedule, fixes on master then the release branch within days. The wrynose branch last moved 2026-06-10; master 2026-06-29. |
| meta-raspberrypi community | wrynose | wrynose | Active last commit 2026-07-07 | Very disciplined: a branch for every Yocto release since dunfell, cut promptly. Master declares only the current release rather than accumulating a list. |
| meta-freescale community | whinlatter wrynose | wrynose | Active last commit 2026-07-14 | The COMMUNITY NXP layer. Follows Yocto’s cadence, not NXP’s — a branch per Yocto release, cut on time, with same-day backports. This is the one to use if you want i.MX support aligned to a Yocto release; meta-imx follows NXP’s own calendar. |
| meta-imx vendor | mickledore … wrynose (long historical list) | wrynose-6.18.20-2.0.0 | Active last commit 2026-07-10 | NXP’s official layer follows NXP’s OWN BSP cadence, not Yocto’s. There is NO master branch — branches are named codename-kernel-BSPrev (for example scarthgap-6.6.52-2.2.0, wrynose-6.18.20-2.0.0) and the default branch IS the newest BSP. The declared compat list is long, but in practice you must check out the exact branch NXP shipped for your SoC. |
| meta-ti vendor | whinlatter wrynose (meta-ti-bsp) | wrynose | Active last commit 2026-07-10 | TI does NOT cut a branch for every Yocto release: there is no styhead, walnascar or whinlatter branch — only dunfell, kirkstone, scarthgap (LTS) and wrynose. Each has -next and -wip siblings fed by TI’s CI. The wrynose branch still carries am335x-evm.conf, so the ARM32 Sitara parts are not dropped from the current release. |
| meta-tegra community | blacksail (master already on the NEXT release) | wrynose | Active last commit 2026-07-13 | Community (OE4T), NOT NVIDIA. Branching is two-dimensional — per Yocto release AND per NVIDIA L4T/JetPack version (scarthgap-l4t-r35.x, master-l4t-r38.4.x) — because L4T is what really constrains what you can build. Highly active. |
| meta-qcom vendor | wrynose | wrynose | Active last commit 2026-07-14 | Now in Qualcomm’s own GitHub org and driven by Qualcomm engineers plus community maintainers (it began as a community layer, so treat “vendor” loosely). Skips releases: it keeps kirkstone, scarthgap, styhead, wrynose and master — no walnascar or whinlatter branch. |
| meta-st-stm32mp vendor | wrynose (read on the release branch, not master) | wrynose_v26.02.18 | Active last commit 2026-06-23 | Do NOT judge this layer by its master branch — master has been an empty 2019 README stub with no layer.conf. ST develops on per-release branches tied to its OpenSTLinux version (wrynose_v26.02.18), so it follows ST’s OpenSTLinux calendar. No whinlatter branch — ST skipped it. |
| meta-xilinx vendor | styhead walnascar on master (STALE); wrynose on wrynose-next | wrynose-next | Active last commit 2026-07-11 | Master is misleading: untouched since 2024-11-24 and still declaring styhead and walnascar. AMD’s real cadence is the Vivado/Vitis tool release (rel-vYYYY.N) plus a codename-next integration branch. There is still no plain wrynose branch — only wrynose-next, which is where meta-xilinx-core declares LAYERSERIES_COMPAT_xilinx = wrynose. |
| meta-rockchip community | wrynose | wrynose | Slow last commit 2026-04-08 | Community layer effectively maintained by one person. It does cut a branch per Yocto release, but the commit rate is low — master and wrynose have not moved since April 2026. Rockchip the company does not maintain this; its vendor BSPs live outside Yocto. |
| meta-sunxi community | wrynose (declared on master) | walnascar no branch for current LTS | Active last commit 2026-07-13 | Purely community; no vendor involvement. It DECLARES wrynose compatibility on master, but there is NO wrynose branch (and no whinlatter) — the newest release-named branch is walnascar, which is EOL. For the current LTS you must build from the rolling master, whose last commit is 2026-07-13. Thin, bursty activity. |
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An email when a kernel series reaches end of life, a board row changes, or a layer picks up a release branch. Nothing else.
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