Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

By : Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds
5 (3)
Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

5 (3)
By: Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

If you’re looking for a book that will demystify embedded Linux, then you’ve come to the right place. Mastering Embedded Linux Programming is a fully comprehensive guide that can serve both as means to learn new things or as a handy reference. The first few chapters of this book will break down the fundamental elements that underpin all embedded Linux projects: the toolchain, the bootloader, the kernel, and the root filesystem. After that, you will learn how to create each of these elements from scratch and automate the process using Buildroot and the Yocto Project. As you progress, the book will show you how to implement an effective storage strategy for flash memory chips and install updates to a device remotely once it’s deployed. You’ll also learn about the key aspects of writing code for embedded Linux, such as how to access hardware from apps, the implications of writing multi-threaded code, and techniques to manage memory in an efficient way. The final chapters demonstrate how to debug your code, whether it resides in apps or in the Linux kernel itself. You’ll also cover the different tracers and profilers that are available for Linux so that you can quickly pinpoint any performance bottlenecks in your system. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to create efficient and secure embedded devices using Linux.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
1
Section 1: Elements of Embedded Linux
10
Section 2: System Architecture and Design Decisions
18
Section 3: Writing Embedded Applications
22
Section 4: Debugging and Optimizing Performance

Building a toolchain using crosstool-NG

Some years ago, Dan Kegel wrote a set of scripts and makefiles for generating cross-development toolchains and called it crosstool (http://kegel.com/crosstool/). In 2007, Yann E. Morin used that base to create the next generation of crosstool, crosstool-NG (https://crosstool-ng.github.io). Today it is by far the most convenient way to create a standalone cross toolchain from source.

In this section, we will use crosstool-NG to build toolchains for the BeagleBone Black
and QEMU.

Installing crosstool-NG

Before you can build crosstool-NG from source, you will first need to install a native toolchain and some build tools on your host machine. See the section on Technical requirements at the beginning of this chapter for crosstool-NG's complete list of build and runtime dependencies.

Next, get the current release from the crosstool-NG Git repository. In my examples, I have used version 1.24.0. Extract it and create the frontend menu...