Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming

By : Chris Simmonds
Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming

By: Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming takes you through the product cycle and gives you an in-depth description of the components and options that are available at each stage. You will begin by learning about toolchains, bootloaders, the Linux kernel, and how to configure a root filesystem to create a basic working device. You will then learn how to use the two most commonly used build systems, Buildroot and Yocto, to speed up and simplify the development process. Building on this solid base, the next section considers how to make best use of raw NAND/NOR flash memory and managed flash eMMC chips, including mechanisms for increasing the lifetime of the devices and to perform reliable in-field updates. Next, you need to consider what techniques are best suited to writing applications for your device. We will then see how functions are split between processes and the usage of POSIX threads, which have a big impact on the responsiveness and performance of the final device The closing sections look at the techniques available to developers for profiling and tracing applications and kernel code using perf and ftrace.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Embedded Linux Programming
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


Using a build system takes the hard work out of creating an embedded Linux system, and it is almost always better than hand crafting a roll your own system. There is a range of open source build systems available these days: Buildroot and the Yocto Project represent two different approaches. Buildroot is simple and quick, making it a good choice for fairly simple single-purpose devices: traditional embedded Linux as I like to think of them.

The Yocto Project is more complex and flexible. It is package based, meaning that you have the option to install a package manager and perform updates of individual packages in the field. The meta layer structure makes it easy to extend the metadata and indeed there is good support throughout the community and industry for the Yocto Project. The downside is that there is a very steep learning curve: you should expect it to take several months to become proficient with it, and even then it will sometimes do things that you didn't expect, or at least...