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

Package formats and package managers


Mainstream Linux distributions are, in most cases, constructed from collections of binary (precompiled) packages in either RPM or deb format. RPM stands for Red Hat Package Manager and is used in Red Hat, Suse, Fedora, and other distributions based on them. Debian-derived distributions, including Ubuntu and Mint, use the Debian package manager format, deb. In addition, there is a light-weight format specific to embedded devices known as the Itsy PacKage format, or ipk, which is based on deb.

The ability to include a package manager on the device is one of the big differentiators between build systems. Once you have a package manager on the target device, you have an easy path to deploy new packages to it and to update existing ones. I will talk about the implications of this in the next chapter.