Where to Find OpenEmbedded Documentation and Community Support

Updated

OpenEmbedded's official documentation, FAQ, and community channels are all linked from its main wiki page at openembedded.org. The site organizes these into two main sections: Users (getting started, FAQ, documentation) and Developers (policies, debugging, OpenEmbedded-Core), plus a Community section covering discussion, mailing lists, IRC, calendar, and bug tracking. If you need help or want to report a problem, the Bug Tracking page and the mailing lists/IRC channels are your primary entry points.

Documentation and learning resources

The wiki's Users section is the starting point for anyone new to the build framework:

  • Getting started – introductory material for setting up OpenEmbedded.
  • Frequently asked questions – answers to common questions, useful before posting to the community.
  • Documentation – the main documentation index.

A separate Developers section covers Policies, Debugging a build, and OpenEmbedded-Core, which matters if you are modifying recipes or layers rather than just building an image.

Community support channels

The Community section lists the places where OpenEmbedded users and developers actually talk:

Channel What it's for
Discussion website General community discussion
Mailing lists Threaded technical questions and announcements
IRC chat Real-time help
Calendar Scheduled meetings and events
Bug tracking Reporting and following issues
Happy Hours Recurring community meetups

For a first question, the FAQ and mailing lists are the lowest-friction options; IRC is better suited to quick, real-time exchanges.

Reporting bugs and tracking issues

Bug tracking is listed both in the Community section and in the site's main navigation, so it is the canonical place to file and follow defects. Before filing, check the FAQ and search existing reports — the wiki explicitly pairs "Bug tracking" with the Users/Developers navigation, suggesting it is intended for both audiences.

Developer tools and services

Beyond documentation and chat, the site links to infrastructure that developers use directly:

  • git server – source repositories.
  • Patch Queue – pending patch review.
  • Layer Index – searchable index of available layers.
  • OE services – the umbrella entry for these tools.

These live under the Categories → OE services grouping on the main page.

Recent community activity

The news list on the main page shows the community is active as of early 2025: a workshop hosted after FOSDEM (2025-02-02), the Yocto Project Summit 2025.12 (2024-12-02), and a developer meeting in Amsterdam before the Linux Foundation OSSEU (2025-08-24). An older News Archive holds earlier items. Checking the calendar and news entries is a reasonable way to find in-person or virtual events where you can ask questions directly.

Quick reference

  • Start here: openembedded.org main page → Users → Getting started / FAQ / Documentation.
  • Ask a question: Community → Mailing lists or IRC.
  • Report a problem: Bug tracking.
  • Find layers or patches: OE services → Layer Index, Patch Queue, git server.

One practical note: the wiki page itself was last edited in May 2017, while the news items are current through 2025 — so treat the navigation structure as stable but verify time-sensitive details (event dates, tool URLs) through the linked pages rather than the main page alone.