[yocto] Why use Yocto?

[Christian Ege]

Am 10.06.2014 12:38 schrieb "Paul Barker" <paul at paulbarker.me.uk>:
>
> On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 03:52:50PM -0700, Marlon Smith wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I'm developing a product that will run on a custom i.MX6 board and I'm
> > trying to decide whether to use Yocto or Ubuntu (there's a version of
> > Ubuntu packaged for the Wandboard that will run on our board).  The
> > board will run our own custom app, and we'll modify the Linux kernel to
> > support our hardware.
> >
> > Ubuntu seems like it would be ready to go - just put it on an SD card,
> > boot the board, compile the app and create a new SD card image from the
> > result to use for manufacturing.
> >
> > Yocto seems like it would be easier to remove unneeded packages from,
> > and easier to cross-compile the application for.  This means we could
> > have a smaller SD card image in the end.
> >
> > What are your thoughts on this?
>
> Philip has already mentioned license compliance in his reply, I'd like to
add a
> couple of other points:
>
> - In addition to a smaller image, you should have less services running by
>   default and so lower power usage.
>
This is because yocto splits documentation and not needed stuff in separate
packages. In ubuntu you have to remove a lot of stuff.
> - It's much easier to do consistent, reproducible image builds which
include
This us a major feature. You can build the whole image by Jenkins or any
other build server.
>   your own packages. Rather than having a series of steps such as
installing
>   Ubuntu on an SD card, booting, installing required additional packages,
>   downloading your source code to the card, building and then installing,
you
>   just do 'bitbake my-image' and everything you need is encoded in recipe
files
>   which you can keep under version control. There's less chance for human
error
>   to creep in.
>
> - You don't need to install the toolchain on the board itself, you can do
the
You can even create your own toolchain with all needed headers. And it is
damn easy to remote debug your application from eclipse for example.
>   system build on a separate machine and not pollute the SD card image
with the
>   history of building your software. It saves you the time of going
through and
>   removing the things you need to build your software but aren't needed
to run
>   it, which you'll probably end up doing to reduce the image size.
>
> - You'll have a great community of people doing similar things with the
Yocto
+1
>   Project. I don't know of a similar community for modifying Ubuntu SD
card
>   images in this fashion.
>
And you can fine tune all those recipe and build for example a hard float
or a softfloat image.

It is a little bit hard to get started but if you get familiar with this.
There is no alternative :)

--
Christian Ege
> Hope this helps,
>
> --
> Paul Barker
>
> Email: paul at paulbarker.me.uk
> http://www.paulbarker.me.uk
>
> --
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