====== Prepare OpenWRT 21.02.x on Ubuntu 20.04 ======
===== Prepare The System =====
  * This page will cover the preparation work for you to be able to build the OpenWRT based MESHdesk firmware. 
  * The SDK and build process will require ~30-40G of hard drive space.
  * Install the required packages to ensure the SDK can build the firmware.
<code bash>
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion git-core libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev gawk flex quilt libssl-dev xsltproc libxml-parser-perl unzip mercurial
</code>

  * Create the location for the SDK
  * Our suggestion is to create a folder that will indicate the version of the firmware you'll be building.
  * Here we create a folder for the **21.02.0** release.

<wrap em>The 21.02.1 release (current at the time of this writing)  have not yet been tested extensively by us.</wrap>

<code bash>
# Create the working directory 
mkdir 21.02.0
# Change to our working directory 
cd 21.02.0
</code>

===== Checkout the SDK =====
  *  Do a clean checkout of the OpenWRT repository.
<code bash>
 git clone https://git.openwrt.org/openwrt/openwrt.git
</code>
  *  This repository has various branches. To see which branches are available and which one we are currently set to use, issue the following command.
<code bash>
#We may first need to change our directory to the openwrt directory
cd openwrt
git branch -a
#Also to see the tags 
git tag -l
</code>
  * We will be checking out the **v21.02.0** tag.
<code bash>
git checkout v21.02.0
</code>
  * Confirm that this **v21.02.0** is now checked out.
<code bash>
git branch
</code>
  * Update the package feeds.
<code bash>
./scripts/feeds update
</code>
===== Install the required packages =====
  * Ensure the following packages are installed since they are required by the **MESHdesk** package.
<code bash>
./scripts/feeds install coova-chilli
./scripts/feeds install luasocket
./scripts/feeds install libuci-lua
./scripts/feeds install curl
./scripts/feeds install -a -p routing 
./scripts/feeds install iwinfo
./scripts/feeds install luci
./scripts/feeds install luci-theme-material
./scripts/feeds install mosquitto
./scripts/feeds install lua-mosquitto
#For backward compatibility in 21.02 with older Luci libs
./scripts/feeds install luci-compat
</code>
  * Everything is now prepared for us to add the [[md:openwrt-meshdesk|MESHdesk package]].