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0 pointsjohnea3d ago0 comments

I've used buildroot extensively, and an occasional yockto.

My impression in recent years is that these image cross build environments are just not as frequently needed as they were back in the day of their invention.

My most recent embedded linux environments were just embedded archlinux.

No need to cross build an image, just install and run the minimized linux environment right on the target.

Of course, a big part of the need for these cross-tools is that it seems most modern embedded linux developers are running windoze on their development workstations 8-/

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xyzzy_plugh3d ago· 5 in thread

Are you proposing compiling on the target? For a vast number of embedded systems that is not only impossible (insufficient disk and memory) but also incredibly slow.

At the end of the day you need some cross compilation just for board bring up.

If you're playing with some platform for which this has already been done, then sure, but that's not really the "normal" way of doing embedded.

cbrake2d ago

There are several ways to compile for the target:

1) Cross compile. Yoe build still does this where it makes sense. (Go apps, likely kernel builds in the future) 2) QEMU user mode - 5-20x slow, but fine for some things. 3) Run yoe-build on any ARM machine (AWS, rPI5, Jetson) 4) Farm unit builds out to runners on cloud ARM machines. (future)

The yoe-build architecture allows for this. Choose the container, host architecture, and location that makes the most sense on a unit-by-unit basis.

Caching is also part of the vision, so we never rebuild something twice, unless it changes.

nickthenerd1d ago

Doing this on target seems terrible. What an awful development experience.

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johneaOP2d ago

I'm talking about cross building an image, and flashing an entire image onto the target. This is the purpose of environments like yocto and buildroot.

My preference is to cross build packages for each application on my workstation, and maintain a local package repository from which individual packages are installed on the target.

I find archlinux extremely useful in this configuration, because even if I'm not building on the target, the same package maintenance and other system commands are identical to my development workstation.

Additionally, archlinux provides a well documented, and fairly simple process for hosting your own local repositories.

KingMachiavelli3d ago

Embedded just means ARM 99% of the time and it's cheaper and easier to use native ARM servers (AWS has them cheap) than to make 100% of software cross compile. Some parts of the firmware might need to be cross compiled but those projects are designed to cross compile.

okanat3d ago

Your target build environment often differs significantly from your server environment, so you end up needing a different toolchain and all of the problems that come with cross-compilation anyway. The toolchain and ABI settings that produce small, battery or instruction cache efficient are usually not you want on servers.

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