Most of the information available in this book, and the examples presented as exercises, have one thing in common: the fact that they are freely available for anyone to access. This book tries to offer guidance to you on how to interact with existing and freely available packages that could help an embedded engineer, such as you, and at the same time, also try to arouse your curiosity to learn more.
The main advantage of open source is represented by the fact that it permits developers to concentrate more on their products and their added value. Having an open source product offers access to a variety of new possibilities and opportunities, such as reduced costs of licensing, increased skills, and knowledge of a company. The fact that a company uses an open source product that most people have access to, and can understand its working, implies budget savings. The money saved could be used in other departments, such as hardware or acquisitions.
Usually, there is a misconception about open source having little or no control over a product. However, the opposite is true. The open source system, in general, offers full control over software, and we are going to demonstrate this. For any software, your open source project resides on a repository that offers access for everyone to see. Since you're the person in charge of a project, and its administrator as well, you have all the right in the world to accept the contributions of others, which lends them the same right as you, and this basically gives you the freedom to do whatever you like. Of course, there could be someone who is inspired by your project and could do something that is more appreciated by the open source community. However, this is how progress is made, and, to be completely honest, if you are a company, this kind of scenario is almost invalid. Even in this case, this situation does not mean the death of your project, but an opportunity instead. Here, I would like to present the following quote:
"If you want to build an open source project, you can't let your ego stand in the way. You can't rewrite everybody's patches, you can't second-guess everybody, and you have to give people equal control." | ||
| --– Rasmus Lerdorf | ||
Instead of a conclusion, I would also like to present a quote from the person who forms the core of this process, the man who offered us Linux and kept it open source:
"I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things." | ||
| --– Linus Torvalds | ||
Now that the benefits of open source have been introduced to you, I believe we can go through a number of examples of embedded systems, hardware, software, and their components. For starters, embedded devices are available anywhere around us: take a look at your smartphone, car infotainment system, microwave oven, or even your MP3 player. Of course, not all of them qualify to be Linux operating systems, but they all have embedded components that make it possible for them to fulfill their designed functions.
For Linux to be run on any device hardware, you will require some hardware-dependent components that are able to abstract the work for hardware-independent ones. The boot loader, kernel, and toolchain contain hardware-dependent components that make the performance of work easier for all the other components. For example, a BusyBox developer will only concentrate on developing the required functionalities for his application, and will not concentrate on hardware compatibility. All these hardware-dependent components offer support for a large variety of hardware architectures for both 32 and 64 bits. For example, the U-Boot implementation is the easiest to take as an example when it comes to source code inspection. From this, we can easily visualize how support for a new device can be added.
We will now try to do some of the little exercises presented previously, but before moving further, I must present the computer configuration on which I will continue to do the exercises, to make sure that that you face as few problems as possible. I am working on an Ubuntu 14.04 and have downloaded the 64-bit image available on the Ubuntu website at http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Information relevant to the Linux operation running on your computer can be gathered using this command:
uname –srmpio
The preceding command generates this output:
Linux 3.13.0-36-generic x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The next command to gather the information relevant to the Linux operation is as follows:
Now, moving on to exercises, the first one requires you fetch the git repository sources for the U-Boot package:
Some of the directories that can be visualized are arch/arc and arch/metag.
From the toolchain point of view, the hardware-dependent component is represented by the GNU C Library, which is, in turn, usually represented by glibc. This provides the system call interface that connects to the kernel architecture-dependent code and further provides the communication mechanism between these two entities to user applications. System calls are presented inside the sysdeps directory of the glibc sources if the glibc sources are cloned, as follows:
These packages are also very easily accessible using the Yocto Project's poky repository. As mentioned at https://www.yoctoproject.org/about:
"The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture. It was founded in 2010 as a collaboration among many hardware manufacturers, open-source operating systems vendors, and electronics companies to bring some order to the chaos of embedded Linux development."
Most of the interaction anyone has with the Yocto Project is done through the Poky build system, which is one of its core components that offers the features and functionalities needed to generate fully customizable Linux software stacks. The first step needed to ensure interaction with the repository sources would be to clone them:
git clone -b dizzy http://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
After the sources are present on your computer, a set of recipes and configuration files need to be inspected. The first location that can be inspected is the U-Boot recipe, available at meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot_2013.07.bb. It contains the instructions necessary to build the U-Boot package for the corresponding selected machine. The next place to inspect is in the recipes available in the kernel. Here, the work is sparse and more package versions are available. It also provides some bbappends for available recipes, such as meta/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.14.bb and meta-yocto-bsp/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.10.bbappend. This constitutes a good example for one of the kernel package versions available when starting a new build using BitBake.
Toolchain construction is a big and important step for host generated packages. To do this, a set of packages are necessary, such as gcc, binutils, glibc library, and kernel headers, which play an important role. The recipes corresponding to this package are available inside the meta/recipes-devtools/gcc/, meta/recipes-devtools/binutils, and meta/recipes-core/glibc paths. In all the available locations, a multitude of recipes can be found, each one with a specific purpose. This information will be detailed in the next chapter.
We will now try to do some of the little exercises presented previously, but before moving further, I must present the computer configuration on which I will continue to do the exercises, to make sure that that you face as few problems as possible. I am working on an Ubuntu 14.04 and have downloaded the 64-bit image available on the Ubuntu website at http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Information relevant to the Linux operation running on your computer can be gathered using this command:
uname –srmpio
The preceding command generates this output:
Linux 3.13.0-36-generic x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The next command to gather the information relevant to the Linux operation is as follows:
Now, moving on to exercises, the first one requires you fetch the git repository sources for the U-Boot package:
Some of the directories that can be visualized are arch/arc and arch/metag.
From the toolchain point of view, the hardware-dependent component is represented by the GNU C Library, which is, in turn, usually represented by glibc. This provides the system call interface that connects to the kernel architecture-dependent code and further provides the communication mechanism between these two entities to user applications. System calls are presented inside the sysdeps directory of the glibc sources if the glibc sources are cloned, as follows:
These packages are also very easily accessible using the Yocto Project's poky repository. As mentioned at https://www.yoctoproject.org/about:
"The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture. It was founded in 2010 as a collaboration among many hardware manufacturers, open-source operating systems vendors, and electronics companies to bring some order to the chaos of embedded Linux development."
Most of the interaction anyone has with the Yocto Project is done through the Poky build system, which is one of its core components that offers the features and functionalities needed to generate fully customizable Linux software stacks. The first step needed to ensure interaction with the repository sources would be to clone them:
git clone -b dizzy http://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
After the sources are present on your computer, a set of recipes and configuration files need to be inspected. The first location that can be inspected is the U-Boot recipe, available at meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot_2013.07.bb. It contains the instructions necessary to build the U-Boot package for the corresponding selected machine. The next place to inspect is in the recipes available in the kernel. Here, the work is sparse and more package versions are available. It also provides some bbappends for available recipes, such as meta/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.14.bb and meta-yocto-bsp/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.10.bbappend. This constitutes a good example for one of the kernel package versions available when starting a new build using BitBake.
Toolchain construction is a big and important step for host generated packages. To do this, a set of packages are necessary, such as gcc, binutils, glibc library, and kernel headers, which play an important role. The recipes corresponding to this package are available inside the meta/recipes-devtools/gcc/, meta/recipes-devtools/binutils, and meta/recipes-core/glibc paths. In all the available locations, a multitude of recipes can be found, each one with a specific purpose. This information will be detailed in the next chapter.
on to exercises, the first one requires you fetch the git repository sources for the U-Boot package:
Some of the directories that can be visualized are arch/arc and arch/metag.
From the toolchain point of view, the hardware-dependent component is represented by the GNU C Library, which is, in turn, usually represented by glibc. This provides the system call interface that connects to the kernel architecture-dependent code and further provides the communication mechanism between these two entities to user applications. System calls are presented inside the sysdeps directory of the glibc sources if the glibc sources are cloned, as follows:
These packages are also very easily accessible using the Yocto Project's poky repository. As mentioned at https://www.yoctoproject.org/about:
"The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture. It was founded in 2010 as a collaboration among many hardware manufacturers, open-source operating systems vendors, and electronics companies to bring some order to the chaos of embedded Linux development."
Most of the interaction anyone has with the Yocto Project is done through the Poky build system, which is one of its core components that offers the features and functionalities needed to generate fully customizable Linux software stacks. The first step needed to ensure interaction with the repository sources would be to clone them:
git clone -b dizzy http://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
After the sources are present on your computer, a set of recipes and configuration files need to be inspected. The first location that can be inspected is the U-Boot recipe, available at meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot_2013.07.bb. It contains the instructions necessary to build the U-Boot package for the corresponding selected machine. The next place to inspect is in the recipes available in the kernel. Here, the work is sparse and more package versions are available. It also provides some bbappends for available recipes, such as meta/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.14.bb and meta-yocto-bsp/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto_3.10.bbappend. This constitutes a good example for one of the kernel package versions available when starting a new build using BitBake.
Toolchain construction is a big and important step for host generated packages. To do this, a set of packages are necessary, such as gcc, binutils, glibc library, and kernel headers, which play an important role. The recipes corresponding to this package are available inside the meta/recipes-devtools/gcc/, meta/recipes-devtools/binutils, and meta/recipes-core/glibc paths. In all the available locations, a multitude of recipes can be found, each one with a specific purpose. This information will be detailed in the next chapter.
GNU/Linux, or Linux as it's commonly known, represents a name that has a long line of tradition behind it, and is one of the most important unions of open source software. Shortly, you will be introduced to the history of what is offered to people around the world today and the choice available in terms of selecting personal computer operating systems. Most of all, we will look at what is offered to hardware developers and the common ground available for the development of platforms.
Meanwhile, in 1991, a Finnish student started working on another kernel as a hobby while attending the University of Helsinki. He also got help from various programmers who contributed to the cause over the Internet. That student's name was Linus Torvalds and, in 1992, his kernel was combined with the GNU system. The result was a fully functional operating system called GNU/Linux that was free and open source. The most common form of the GNU system is usually referred to as a GNU/Linux system, or even a Linux distribution, and is the most popular variant of GNU. Today, there are a great number of distributions based on GNU and the Linux kernel, and the most widely used ones are: Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Linux, SuSE, Gentoo, Mandriva, and Slackware. This image shows us how the two components of Linux work together:
- Host machine: This is the machine where all the development tools reside. Outside the Yocto world, these tools are represented by a corresponding toolchain cross-compiled for a specific target and its necessary applications sources and patches. However, for an Yocto user, all these packages, and the preparation work involved, is reduced to automatized tasks executed before the actual work is performed. This, of course, has to be prioritized adequately.
- Target machine: This is the embedded system on which the work is done and tested. All the software available on the target is usually cross-compiled on the host machine, which is a more powerful and more efficient environment. The components that are usually necessary for an embedded device to boot Linux and operate various application, involve using a bootloader for basic initiation and loading of the Linux kernel. This, in turn, initializes drivers and the memory, and offers services for applications to interact with through the functions of the available C libraries.
To have a functional Linux operating system on an development board, a developer first needs to make sure that the kernel, bootloader, and board corresponding drives are working properly before starting to develop and integrate other applications and libraries.
In the previous section, the benefits of having an open source environment were presented. Taking a look at how embedded development was done before the advent of the Yocto Project offers a complete picture of the benefits of this project. It also gives an answer as to why it was adopted so quickly and in such huge numbers.
The most notable solutions are Buildroot, Linux Target Image Builder (LTIB), Scratchbox, OpenEmbedded, Yocto, and Angstrom. However, Scratchbox doesn't seem to be active anymore, with the last commit being done in April 2012. LTIB was the preferred build tool for Freescale and it has lately moved more toward Yocto; in a short span of time, LTIB may become deprecated also.
Buildroot as a tool tries to simplify the ways in which a Linux system is generated using a cross-compiler. Buildroot is able to generate a bootloader, kernel image, root filesystem, and even a cross-compiler. It can generate each one of these components, although in an independent way, and because of this, its main usage has been restricted to a cross-compiled toolchain that generates a corresponding and custom root filesystem. It is mainly used in embedded devices and very rarely for x86 architectures; its main focus being architectures, such as ARM, PowerPC, or MIPS. As with every tool presented in this book, it is designed to run on Linux, and certain packages are expected to be present on the host system for their proper usage. There are a couple of mandatory packages and some optional ones as well.
There is a list of mandatory packages that contain the certain packages, and are described inside the Buildroot manual available at http://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html. These packages are as follows:
whichsedmake(version 3.81 or any later ones)binutilsbuild-essential(required for Debian-based systems only)gcc(version 2.95 or any later ones)g++(version 2.95 or any later ones)bashpatchgzipbzip2perl(version 5.8.7 or any later ones)tarcpiopython(version 2.6 or 2.7 ones)unziprsyncwget
Beside these mandatory packages, there are also a number of optional packages. They are very useful for the following:
- Source fetching tools: In an official tree, most of the package retrieval is done using
wgetfromhttp,https, or evenftplinks, but there are also a couple of links that need a version control system or another type of tool. To make sure that the user does not have a limitation to fetch a package, these tools can be used:bazaarcvsgitmercurialrsyncscpsubversion
- Interface configuration dependencies: They are represented by the packages that are needed to ensure that the tasks, such as kernel, BusyBox, and U-Boot configuration, are executed without problems:
ncurses5is used for the menuconfig interfaceqt4is used for thexconfiginterfaceglib2,gtk2, andglade2are used for thegconfiginterface
- Java related package interaction: This is used to make sure that when a user wants to interact with the Java Classpath component, that it will be done without any hiccups:
javac: this refers to the Java compilerjar: This refers to the Java archive tool
- Graph generation tools: The following are the graph generation tools:
graphvizto usegraph-dependsand<pkg>-graph-dependspython-matplotlibto usegraph-build
- Documentation generation tools: The following are the tools necessary for the documentation generation process:
asciidoc, version 8.6.3 or higherw3mpythonwith theargparsemodule (which is automatically available in 2.7+ and 3.2+ versions)dblatex(necessary for pdf manual generation only)
Buildroot releases are made available to the open source community at http://buildroot.org/downloads/ every three months, specifically in February, May, August, and November, and the release name has the buildroot-yyyy-mm format. For people interested in giving Buildroot a try, the manual described in the previous section should be the starting point for installing and configuration. Developers interested in taking a look at the Buildroot source code can refer to http://git.buildroot.net/buildroot/.
Note
Before cloning the Buildroot source code, I suggest taking a quick look at http://buildroot.org/download. It could help out anyone who works with a proxy server.
Next, there will be presented a new set of tools that brought their contribution to this field and place on a lower support level the Buildroot project. I believe that a quick review of the strengths and weaknesses of these tools would be required. We will start with Scratchbox and, taking into consideration that it is already deprecated, there is not much to say about it; it's being mentioned purely for historical reasons. Next on the line is LTIB, which constituted the standard for Freescale hardware until the adoption of Yocto. It is well supported by Freescale in terms of Board Support Packages (BSPs) and contains a large database of components. On the other hand, it is quite old and it was switched with Yocto. It does not contain the support of new distributions, it is not used by many hardware providers, and, in a short period of time, it could very well become as deprecated as Scratchbox. Buildroot is the last of them and is easy to use, having a Makefile base format and an active community behind it. However, it is limited to smaller and simpler images or devices, and it is not aware of partial builds or packages.
The next tools to be introduced are very closely related and, in fact, have the same inspiration and common ancestor, the OpenEmbedded project. All three projects are linked by the common engine called Bitbake and are inspired by the Gentoo Portage build tool. OpenEmbedded was first developed in 2001 when the Sharp Corporation launched the ARM-based PDA, and SL-5000 Zaurus, which run Lineo, an embedded Linux distribution. After the introduction of Sharp Zaurus, it did not take long for Chris Larson to initiate the OpenZaurus Project, which was meant to be a replacement for SharpROM, based on Buildroot. After this, people started to contribute many more software packages, and even the support of new devices, and, eventually, the system started to show its limitations. In 2003, discussions were initiated around a new build system that could offer a generic build environment and incorporate the usage models requested by the open source community; this was the system to be used for embedded Linux distributions. These discussions started showing results in 2003, and what has emerged today is the Openembedded project. It had packages ported from OpenZaurus by people, such as Chris Larson, Michael Lauer, and Holger Schurig, according to the capabilities of the new build system.
The Yocto Project is the next evolutionary stage of the same project and has the Poky build system as its core piece, which was created by Richard Purdie. The project started as a stabilized branch of the OpenEmbedded project and only included a subset of the numerous recipes available on OpenEmbedded; it also had a limited set of devices and support of architectures. Over time, it became much more than this: it changed into a software development platform that incorporated a fakeroot replacement, an Eclipse plug-in, and QEMU-based images. Both the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded now coordinate around a core set of metadata called OpenEmbedded-Core (OE-Core).
The Yocto Project is sponsored by the Linux Foundation, and offers a starting point for developers of Linux embedded systems who are interested in developing a customized distribution for embedded products in a hardware-agnostic environment. The Poky build system represents one of its core components and is also quite complex. At the center of all this lies Bitbake, the engine that powers everything, the tool that processes metadata, downloads corresponding source codes, resolves dependencies, and stores all the necessary libraries and executables inside the build directory accordingly. Poky combines the best from OpenEmbedded with the idea of layering additional software components that could be added or removed from a build environment configuration, depending on the needs of the developer.
As shown in this example, it is easy to obtain a Linux image that can be later used for testing inside a QEMU environment. There are a number of images footprints available that will vary from a shell-accessible minimal image to an LSB compliant image with GNOME Mobile user interface support. Of course, that these base images can be imported in new ones for added functionalities. The layered structure that Poky has is a great advantage because it adds the possibility to extend functionalities and to contain the impact of errors. Layers could be used for all sort of functionalities, from adding support for a new hardware platform to extending the support for tools, and from a new software stack to extended image features. The sky is the limit here because almost any recipe can be combined with another.
All this is possible because of the Bitbake engine, which, after the environment setup and the tests for minimal systems requirements are met, based on the configuration files and input received, identifies the interdependencies between tasks, the execution order of tasks, generates a fully functional cross-compilation environment, and starts building the necessary native and target-specific packages tasks exactly as they were defined by the developer. Here is an example with a list of the available tasks for a package:
The metadata modularization is based on two ideas—the first one refers to the possibility of prioritizing the structure of layers, and the second refers to the possibility of not having the need for duplicate work when a recipe needs changes. The layers are overlapping. The most general layer is meta, and all the other layers are usually stacked over it, such as meta-yocto with Yocto-specific recipes, machine specific board support packages, and other optional layers, depending on the requirements and needs of developers. The customization of recipes should be done using bbappend situated in an upper layer. This method is preferred to ensure that the duplication of recipes does not happen, and it also helps to support newer and older versions of them.
An example of the organization of layers is found in the previous example that specified the list of the available tasks for a package. If a user is interested in identifying the layers used by the test build setup in the previous exercise that specified the list of the available tasks for a package, the bblayers.conf file is a good source of inspiration. If cat is done on this file, the following output will be visible:
The complete command for doing this is:
Here is a visual mode for the layered structure of a more generic build directory:
Yocto as a project offers another important feature: the possibility of having an image regenerated in the same way, no matter what factors change on your host machine. This is a very important feature, taking into consideration not only that, in the development process, changes to a number of tools, such as autotools, cross-compiler, Makefile, perl, bison, pkgconfig, and so on, could occur, but also the fact that parameters could change in the interaction process with regards to a repository. Simply cloning one of the repository branches and applying corresponding patches may not solve all the problems. The solution that the Yocto Project has to these problems is quite simple. By defining parameters prior to any of the steps of the installation as variables and configuration parameters inside recipes, and by making sure that the configuration process is also automated, will minimize the risks of manual interaction are minimized. This process makes sure that image generation is always done as it was the first time.
The Yocto project contributes to making reliable embedded Linux development and because of its dimensions, it is used for lots of things, ranging from board support packages by hardware companies to new software solutions by software development companies. Yocto is not a perfect tool and it has certain drawbacks:
a tool tries to simplify the ways in which a Linux system is generated using a cross-compiler. Buildroot is able to generate a bootloader, kernel image, root filesystem, and even a cross-compiler. It can generate each one of these components, although in an independent way, and because of this, its main usage has been restricted to a cross-compiled toolchain that generates a corresponding and custom root filesystem. It is mainly used in embedded devices and very rarely for x86 architectures; its main focus being architectures, such as ARM, PowerPC, or MIPS. As with every tool presented in this book, it is designed to run on Linux, and certain packages are expected to be present on the host system for their proper usage. There are a couple of mandatory packages and some optional ones as well.
There is a list of mandatory packages that contain the certain packages, and are described inside the Buildroot manual available at http://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html. These packages are as follows:
whichsedmake(version 3.81 or any later ones)binutilsbuild-essential(required for Debian-based systems only)gcc(version 2.95 or any later ones)g++(version 2.95 or any later ones)bashpatchgzipbzip2perl(version 5.8.7 or any later ones)tarcpiopython(version 2.6 or 2.7 ones)unziprsyncwget
Beside these mandatory packages, there are also a number of optional packages. They are very useful for the following:
- Source fetching tools: In an official tree, most of the package retrieval is done using
wgetfromhttp,https, or evenftplinks, but there are also a couple of links that need a version control system or another type of tool. To make sure that the user does not have a limitation to fetch a package, these tools can be used:bazaarcvsgitmercurialrsyncscpsubversion
- Interface configuration dependencies: They are represented by the packages that are needed to ensure that the tasks, such as kernel, BusyBox, and U-Boot configuration, are executed without problems:
ncurses5is used for the menuconfig interfaceqt4is used for thexconfiginterfaceglib2,gtk2, andglade2are used for thegconfiginterface
- Java related package interaction: This is used to make sure that when a user wants to interact with the Java Classpath component, that it will be done without any hiccups:
javac: this refers to the Java compilerjar: This refers to the Java archive tool
- Graph generation tools: The following are the graph generation tools:
graphvizto usegraph-dependsand<pkg>-graph-dependspython-matplotlibto usegraph-build
- Documentation generation tools: The following are the tools necessary for the documentation generation process:
asciidoc, version 8.6.3 or higherw3mpythonwith theargparsemodule (which is automatically available in 2.7+ and 3.2+ versions)dblatex(necessary for pdf manual generation only)
Buildroot releases are made available to the open source community at http://buildroot.org/downloads/ every three months, specifically in February, May, August, and November, and the release name has the buildroot-yyyy-mm format. For people interested in giving Buildroot a try, the manual described in the previous section should be the starting point for installing and configuration. Developers interested in taking a look at the Buildroot source code can refer to http://git.buildroot.net/buildroot/.
Note
Before cloning the Buildroot source code, I suggest taking a quick look at http://buildroot.org/download. It could help out anyone who works with a proxy server.
Next, there will be presented a new set of tools that brought their contribution to this field and place on a lower support level the Buildroot project. I believe that a quick review of the strengths and weaknesses of these tools would be required. We will start with Scratchbox and, taking into consideration that it is already deprecated, there is not much to say about it; it's being mentioned purely for historical reasons. Next on the line is LTIB, which constituted the standard for Freescale hardware until the adoption of Yocto. It is well supported by Freescale in terms of Board Support Packages (BSPs) and contains a large database of components. On the other hand, it is quite old and it was switched with Yocto. It does not contain the support of new distributions, it is not used by many hardware providers, and, in a short period of time, it could very well become as deprecated as Scratchbox. Buildroot is the last of them and is easy to use, having a Makefile base format and an active community behind it. However, it is limited to smaller and simpler images or devices, and it is not aware of partial builds or packages.
The next tools to be introduced are very closely related and, in fact, have the same inspiration and common ancestor, the OpenEmbedded project. All three projects are linked by the common engine called Bitbake and are inspired by the Gentoo Portage build tool. OpenEmbedded was first developed in 2001 when the Sharp Corporation launched the ARM-based PDA, and SL-5000 Zaurus, which run Lineo, an embedded Linux distribution. After the introduction of Sharp Zaurus, it did not take long for Chris Larson to initiate the OpenZaurus Project, which was meant to be a replacement for SharpROM, based on Buildroot. After this, people started to contribute many more software packages, and even the support of new devices, and, eventually, the system started to show its limitations. In 2003, discussions were initiated around a new build system that could offer a generic build environment and incorporate the usage models requested by the open source community; this was the system to be used for embedded Linux distributions. These discussions started showing results in 2003, and what has emerged today is the Openembedded project. It had packages ported from OpenZaurus by people, such as Chris Larson, Michael Lauer, and Holger Schurig, according to the capabilities of the new build system.
The Yocto Project is the next evolutionary stage of the same project and has the Poky build system as its core piece, which was created by Richard Purdie. The project started as a stabilized branch of the OpenEmbedded project and only included a subset of the numerous recipes available on OpenEmbedded; it also had a limited set of devices and support of architectures. Over time, it became much more than this: it changed into a software development platform that incorporated a fakeroot replacement, an Eclipse plug-in, and QEMU-based images. Both the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded now coordinate around a core set of metadata called OpenEmbedded-Core (OE-Core).
The Yocto Project is sponsored by the Linux Foundation, and offers a starting point for developers of Linux embedded systems who are interested in developing a customized distribution for embedded products in a hardware-agnostic environment. The Poky build system represents one of its core components and is also quite complex. At the center of all this lies Bitbake, the engine that powers everything, the tool that processes metadata, downloads corresponding source codes, resolves dependencies, and stores all the necessary libraries and executables inside the build directory accordingly. Poky combines the best from OpenEmbedded with the idea of layering additional software components that could be added or removed from a build environment configuration, depending on the needs of the developer.
As shown in this example, it is easy to obtain a Linux image that can be later used for testing inside a QEMU environment. There are a number of images footprints available that will vary from a shell-accessible minimal image to an LSB compliant image with GNOME Mobile user interface support. Of course, that these base images can be imported in new ones for added functionalities. The layered structure that Poky has is a great advantage because it adds the possibility to extend functionalities and to contain the impact of errors. Layers could be used for all sort of functionalities, from adding support for a new hardware platform to extending the support for tools, and from a new software stack to extended image features. The sky is the limit here because almost any recipe can be combined with another.
All this is possible because of the Bitbake engine, which, after the environment setup and the tests for minimal systems requirements are met, based on the configuration files and input received, identifies the interdependencies between tasks, the execution order of tasks, generates a fully functional cross-compilation environment, and starts building the necessary native and target-specific packages tasks exactly as they were defined by the developer. Here is an example with a list of the available tasks for a package:
The metadata modularization is based on two ideas—the first one refers to the possibility of prioritizing the structure of layers, and the second refers to the possibility of not having the need for duplicate work when a recipe needs changes. The layers are overlapping. The most general layer is meta, and all the other layers are usually stacked over it, such as meta-yocto with Yocto-specific recipes, machine specific board support packages, and other optional layers, depending on the requirements and needs of developers. The customization of recipes should be done using bbappend situated in an upper layer. This method is preferred to ensure that the duplication of recipes does not happen, and it also helps to support newer and older versions of them.
An example of the organization of layers is found in the previous example that specified the list of the available tasks for a package. If a user is interested in identifying the layers used by the test build setup in the previous exercise that specified the list of the available tasks for a package, the bblayers.conf file is a good source of inspiration. If cat is done on this file, the following output will be visible:
The complete command for doing this is:
Here is a visual mode for the layered structure of a more generic build directory:
Yocto as a project offers another important feature: the possibility of having an image regenerated in the same way, no matter what factors change on your host machine. This is a very important feature, taking into consideration not only that, in the development process, changes to a number of tools, such as autotools, cross-compiler, Makefile, perl, bison, pkgconfig, and so on, could occur, but also the fact that parameters could change in the interaction process with regards to a repository. Simply cloning one of the repository branches and applying corresponding patches may not solve all the problems. The solution that the Yocto Project has to these problems is quite simple. By defining parameters prior to any of the steps of the installation as variables and configuration parameters inside recipes, and by making sure that the configuration process is also automated, will minimize the risks of manual interaction are minimized. This process makes sure that image generation is always done as it was the first time.
The Yocto project contributes to making reliable embedded Linux development and because of its dimensions, it is used for lots of things, ranging from board support packages by hardware companies to new software solutions by software development companies. Yocto is not a perfect tool and it has certain drawbacks:
to be introduced are very closely related and, in fact, have the same inspiration and common ancestor, the OpenEmbedded project. All three projects are linked by the common engine called Bitbake and are inspired by the Gentoo Portage build tool. OpenEmbedded was first developed in 2001 when the Sharp Corporation launched the ARM-based PDA, and SL-5000 Zaurus, which run Lineo, an embedded Linux distribution. After the introduction of Sharp Zaurus, it did not take long for Chris Larson to initiate the OpenZaurus Project, which was meant to be a replacement for SharpROM, based on Buildroot. After this, people started to contribute many more software packages, and even the support of new devices, and, eventually, the system started to show its limitations. In 2003, discussions were initiated around a new build system that could offer a generic build environment and incorporate the usage models requested by the open source community; this was the system to be used for embedded Linux distributions. These discussions started showing results in 2003, and what has emerged today is the Openembedded project. It had packages ported from OpenZaurus by people, such as Chris Larson, Michael Lauer, and Holger Schurig, according to the capabilities of the new build system.
The Yocto Project is the next evolutionary stage of the same project and has the Poky build system as its core piece, which was created by Richard Purdie. The project started as a stabilized branch of the OpenEmbedded project and only included a subset of the numerous recipes available on OpenEmbedded; it also had a limited set of devices and support of architectures. Over time, it became much more than this: it changed into a software development platform that incorporated a fakeroot replacement, an Eclipse plug-in, and QEMU-based images. Both the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded now coordinate around a core set of metadata called OpenEmbedded-Core (OE-Core).
The Yocto Project is sponsored by the Linux Foundation, and offers a starting point for developers of Linux embedded systems who are interested in developing a customized distribution for embedded products in a hardware-agnostic environment. The Poky build system represents one of its core components and is also quite complex. At the center of all this lies Bitbake, the engine that powers everything, the tool that processes metadata, downloads corresponding source codes, resolves dependencies, and stores all the necessary libraries and executables inside the build directory accordingly. Poky combines the best from OpenEmbedded with the idea of layering additional software components that could be added or removed from a build environment configuration, depending on the needs of the developer.
As shown in this example, it is easy to obtain a Linux image that can be later used for testing inside a QEMU environment. There are a number of images footprints available that will vary from a shell-accessible minimal image to an LSB compliant image with GNOME Mobile user interface support. Of course, that these base images can be imported in new ones for added functionalities. The layered structure that Poky has is a great advantage because it adds the possibility to extend functionalities and to contain the impact of errors. Layers could be used for all sort of functionalities, from adding support for a new hardware platform to extending the support for tools, and from a new software stack to extended image features. The sky is the limit here because almost any recipe can be combined with another.
All this is possible because of the Bitbake engine, which, after the environment setup and the tests for minimal systems requirements are met, based on the configuration files and input received, identifies the interdependencies between tasks, the execution order of tasks, generates a fully functional cross-compilation environment, and starts building the necessary native and target-specific packages tasks exactly as they were defined by the developer. Here is an example with a list of the available tasks for a package:
The metadata modularization is based on two ideas—the first one refers to the possibility of prioritizing the structure of layers, and the second refers to the possibility of not having the need for duplicate work when a recipe needs changes. The layers are overlapping. The most general layer is meta, and all the other layers are usually stacked over it, such as meta-yocto with Yocto-specific recipes, machine specific board support packages, and other optional layers, depending on the requirements and needs of developers. The customization of recipes should be done using bbappend situated in an upper layer. This method is preferred to ensure that the duplication of recipes does not happen, and it also helps to support newer and older versions of them.
An example of the organization of layers is found in the previous example that specified the list of the available tasks for a package. If a user is interested in identifying the layers used by the test build setup in the previous exercise that specified the list of the available tasks for a package, the bblayers.conf file is a good source of inspiration. If cat is done on this file, the following output will be visible:
The complete command for doing this is:
Here is a visual mode for the layered structure of a more generic build directory:
Yocto as a project offers another important feature: the possibility of having an image regenerated in the same way, no matter what factors change on your host machine. This is a very important feature, taking into consideration not only that, in the development process, changes to a number of tools, such as autotools, cross-compiler, Makefile, perl, bison, pkgconfig, and so on, could occur, but also the fact that parameters could change in the interaction process with regards to a repository. Simply cloning one of the repository branches and applying corresponding patches may not solve all the problems. The solution that the Yocto Project has to these problems is quite simple. By defining parameters prior to any of the steps of the installation as variables and configuration parameters inside recipes, and by making sure that the configuration process is also automated, will minimize the risks of manual interaction are minimized. This process makes sure that image generation is always done as it was the first time.
The Yocto project contributes to making reliable embedded Linux development and because of its dimensions, it is used for lots of things, ranging from board support packages by hardware companies to new software solutions by software development companies. Yocto is not a perfect tool and it has certain drawbacks: