Device tree overlay deployment on Torizon

I’m using a Colibri iMX6 SOM on a custom board.

I have an AT25 eeprom on the board. So I have enabled the AT25 driver in the kernel and build the custom Torizon Core. And then enable the AT25 eeprom device in a device tree overlay.

The question is: How do I deploy the device tree overlay in a release image? Do I have to pull the device tree tool container, deploy the device tree overlay and then delete the container?

Greetings @airpumpkin,

You are mostly correct. The device tree container just contains some utilities that make the deployment of an overlay easier. Once an overlay is applied what happens is that the container actually adjusts the boot process so that the overlay is applied on boot up. So once an overlay has been applied you’re free to keep or delete the container.

Best Regards,
Jeremias

Thanks for your reply, jeremias.

Maybe I haven’t make my question clear enough. I was asking that when I deploy in production, do I have to repeat the pull/deploy/delete precedure on all SOMs?

I apologize, I understand your question now.

Currently at the moment the overlay container is a great tool in development for quickly testing device tree changes without having to recompile and deploy a new device tree binary. For production however as you’ve noticed it gets a little bloated with having to pull/deploy/delete this container on each SOM.

In the future we plan to have better device configuration integration such that these changes can be easily deployed in a production environment.

For the present though the overlay container is more of a development tool for figuring out what changes to the device tree are required. In the end it would be best to have this changes patched into the device tree proper, that way they are even then picked up by our OTA update system.

I hope this helps better answer your question.

Best Regards,
Jeremias