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

Chapter 8: Yocto Under the Hood

In this chapter, we'll dive deeper into Yocto, embedded Linux's premier build system. We will begin with a tour of Yocto's architecture, taking you through the entire build workflow step by step. Next, we'll look at Yocto's multi-layer approach and why it is a good idea to separate metadata into different layers. As more and more BitBake layers stack up inside your projects, problems will inevitably arise. We will examine a number of ways to debug Yocto build failures, including task logs, devshell, and dependency graphs.

After taking apart the build system, we'll revisit the topic of BitBake from the previous chapter. This time around, we'll cover more of the basic syntax and semantics so that you can write your own recipes from scratch. We'll look at real-world examples of BitBake shell and Python code from actual recipe, include, and configuration files so that you know what to expect when you begin to venture...