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


Flash memory has been the storage technology of choice for embedded Linux from the beginning and over the years Linux has gained very good support, from low-level drivers up to flash-aware filesystems, the latest being UBIFS.

However, as the rate at which new flash technologies are introduced increases, it is becoming harder to keep pace with the changes at the high end. System designers are increasingly turning to managed flash in the form of eMMC to provide a stable hardware and software interface which is independent of the memory chips inside. Embedded Linux developers are beginning to get to grips with these new chips. Support for TRIM in ext4 and F2FS is well established, and it is slowly finding its way into the chips themselves. Also, the appearance of new filesystems that are optimized to manage flash, such as F2FS, is a welcome step forward.

However, the fact remains that flash memory is not the same as a hard disk drive. You have to be careful to minimize the number of filesystem...