Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

Embedded computers have become very complex in the last few years and developers need to easily manage them by focusing on how to solve a problem without wasting time in finding supported peripherals or learning how to manage them. The main challenge with experienced embedded programmers and engineers is really how long it takes to turn an idea into reality, and we show you exactly how to do it. This book shows how to interact with external environments through specific peripherals used in the industry. We will use the latest Linux kernel release 4.4.x and Debian/Ubuntu distributions (with embedded distributions like OpenWrt and Yocto). The book will present popular boards in the industry that are user-friendly to base the rest of the projects on - BeagleBone Black, SAMA5D3 Xplained, Wandboard and system-on-chip manufacturers. Readers will be able to take their first steps in programming the embedded platforms, using C, Bash, and Python/PHP languages in order to get access to the external peripherals. More about using and programming device driver and accessing the peripherals will be covered to lay a strong foundation. The readers will learn how to read/write data from/to the external environment by using both C programs or a scripting language (Bash/PHP/Python) and how to configure a device driver for a specific hardware. After finishing this book, the readers will be able to gain a good knowledge level and understanding of writing, configuring, and managing drivers, controlling and monitoring applications with the help of efficient/quick programming and will be able to apply these skills into real-world projects.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

The Kernel and DTS files


The main target of this book is to give several suggestions for rapid programming methods to be used on an embedded GNU/Linux system. However, the main target of every embedded developer is to realize programs to manage peripherals, to monitor or to control devices, and other similar tasks to interact with the real world. So, we mainly need to know the techniques useful to get access to the peripheral's data and settings.

That's why, we need to know how to recompile the kernel and how to configure it.

Recompiling the kernel

Our developer kits are well supported, and in this situation, it is quite rare that we need a complete kernel recompilation. However, knowing how to do this step is quite essential for every embedded developer (it may happen that we need to add some external peripherals or modify the default configuration).

Since we decided to use the Robert C. Nelson repositories, we can still continue using them. However, some words must be spent to clarify some...