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


Linux is a very powerful and complex operating system kernel that can be married to various types of user space ranging from a simple embedded device, to increasingly complex mobile devices using Android, to a full server operating system. One of its strengths is the degree of configurability. The definitive place to get the source code is www.kerenl.org, but you will probably need to get the source for a particular SoC or board from the vendor of that device or a third-party that supports that device. The customization of the kernel for a particular target may consist of changes to the core kernel code, additional drivers for devices that are not in mainline Linux, a default kernel configuration file and, a device tree source file.

Normally you start with the default configuration for your target board, and then tweak it by running one of the configuration tools such as menuconfig. One of the things you should consider at this point is whether kernel features and drivers should be...