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 (16 chapters)
15
Index

Device drivers in user-space


Before you start writing a device driver, pause for a moment to consider whether it is really necessary. There are generic device drivers for many common types of device that allow you to interact with hardware directly from user space without having to write a line of kernel code. User space code is certainly easier to write and debug. It is also not covered by the GPL, although I don't feel that is a good reason in itself to do it this way.

They fall into two broad categories: those that you control through files in sysfs, including GPIO and LEDs, and serial buses that expose a generic interface through a device node, such as I2C.

GPIO

General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) is the simplest form of digital interface since it gives you direct access to individual hardware pins, each of which can be configured as input or output. GPIO can even be used to create higher level interfaces such as I2C or SPI by manipulating each bit in the software, a technique that is called...