
Getting Started: The Yocto Project® Overview
The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products, regardless of the hardware architecture. The project provides a flexible set of tools and a space where embedded developers worldwide can share technologies, software stacks, configurations and best practices which can be used to create tailored Linux images for embedded devices.
The project provides a standard to delivering hardware support and software stacks, allowing the interchange of software configurations and builds. The tools allow users to build and support customizations for multiple hardware platforms and software stacks in a maintainable and scalable way.
Historically the project grew from, and works with the OpenEmbedded Project which is where the build system and some of the meta-data are derived.
The Yocto Project combines, maintains and validates three (3) key development elements.
- A set of integrated tools to make working with embedded Linux successful, including tools for automated building and testing, processes for board support and license compliance, and component information for custom Linux-based embedded operating systems
- A reference embedded distribution (called Poky)
- The OpenEmbedded build system, co-maintained with the OpenEmbedded Project