On Tue I gave a talk at RTECC Santa Clara about a source-based approach to embedded Linux. The gist of the talk was based on a few points:

• Standardized distributions don’t provide complete solutions for embedded developers
• Embedded developers heavily customize - add/remove/modify many elements in the software stack
• Every device is unique, every software stack is a Custom Linux Distribution
• A codified (standardized, programmatic) method for defining a CLD improves efficiency
• Bitbake (the tool, not OE the distro) is a step in the right direction for such a standard

The audience was mostly senior engineers, and I saw a lot of heads nodding as I introduced the first couple of points. It’s been my experience that senior engineers usually end up building and maintaining the glue-ware infrastructure for putting together a CLD. When I got into the bitbake portion of the talk I had to clarify that I was talking about bitbake-the-tool, not bitbake-plus-openembedded-distribution. This was clarified when I showed how we do this in MVL6.

Overall there was a warm response to the notion of providing a standardized way of creating a CLD, but even separating bitbake from the OE distro requires some work. Open source hasn’t quite solved the problem yet, which is why MontaVista is trying to push bitbake as a process standard, regardless of the underlying distribution.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:21 pm and is filed under build, opensource, process.