If you build an eSDK using the poky repository but without meta-poky in your bblayers.conf (which of course means you're using a different DISTRO value) then when you come to install the eSDK you will get an error like this:

  Error: 'meta-poky/conf' must be a directory containing local.conf & bblayers.conf

Ignoring for the moment the slightly incorrect error message, the issue is that the TEMPLATECONF environment variable is being set simply by using the poky repository, since there is a .templateconf directory at its root that sets it to "meta-poky/conf" if it isn't already set. This isn't a problem during normal operation since meta-poky/conf exists, but when you generate the eSDK, meta-poky won't be copied into it because that layer is not in bblayers.conf and thus the error occurs when bitbake first gets run internally during the build system preparation.

Since we don't actually need the template config files in the eSDK (we already generate real ones), we should just ensure the value gets set to a reasonable value when building it in order to avoid the error.