Book Image

Embedded Linux Development Using Yocto Project Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Alex Gonzalez
Book Image

Embedded Linux Development Using Yocto Project Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Alex Gonzalez

Overview of this book

The Yocto Project has become the de facto distribution build framework for reliable and robust embedded systems with a reduced time to market.You'll get started by working on a build system where you set up Yocto, create a build directory, and learn how to debug it. Then, you'll explore everything about the BSP layer, from creating a custom layer to debugging device tree issues. In addition to this, you’ll learn how to add a new software layer, packages, data, scripts, and configuration files to your system. You will then cover topics based on application development, such as using the Software Development Kit and how to use the Yocto project in various development environments. Toward the end, you will learn how to debug, trace, and profile a running system. This second edition has been updated to include new content based on the latest Yocto release.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

Introducing toolchains


A toolchain is a set of tools, binaries, and libraries used to build applications to run on a computer platform. In Yocto, the default toolchains are based on GNU components with GPL licenses.

Getting ready

A GNU toolchain contains the following components:

  • Assembler (GNU as): This is part of the binutils package
  • Linker (GNU ld): This is also part of the binutils package
  • Compiler (GNU gcc): Latest versions have support for C, C++, Java, Ada, Fortran, Go, and Objective C/C++
  • Debugger (GNU gdb): This is the GNU debugger
  • Binary file tools (objdump, nm, objcopy, readelf, strip, and so on): These are part of the binutils package.

These components are enough to build bare-metal applications, bootloaders like U-Boot, or operating systems like the Linux kernel, as they don't need a C library and they implement the C library functions they need. However, for Linux user space applications, a POSIX-compliant C library is needed. The GNU C library, glibc, is the default C library used...