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Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

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Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#11

Post by lukeh »

palata wrote: post #9

Yocto is pretty great! Unfortunately I feel like it gets a lot of criticism, but usually from people who haven't gotten to learn it. Like "I had to spend 2h on Yocto and this thing suuuuucks , I threw a docker image there and called it a day". Which is a pity, because when used correctly it's really powerful! From the article, I can't help but mention that one third of the "key terminology" is about codenames. What d…

Yeah, I was a bit scared off by it and both the terminology and the curious mixing of Python and bash can be a bit confusing. But it’s powerful and also very extensible without (generally) having to fork upstream layers.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#15

Post by fullstop »

themadsens wrote: post #6
lukeh wrote: post #2

Love Yocto! It has a learning curve but it took about a week from nothing to an embedded image including Swift and Flutter apps, U-Boot, etc. A curve worth climbing.

I always found buildroot a lot easier to fathom and harness. And certainly flexible enough with the ability patch every included recipe and package.

I cut my teeth on Buildroot but greatly prefer Yocto now. Buildroot is fast and loose, where Yocto forces you to do the right thing.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#16

Post by allo37 »

palata wrote: post #9

Yocto is pretty great! Unfortunately I feel like it gets a lot of criticism, but usually from people who haven't gotten to learn it. Like "I had to spend 2h on Yocto and this thing suuuuucks , I threw a docker image there and called it a day". Which is a pity, because when used correctly it's really powerful! From the article, I can't help but mention that one third of the "key terminology" is about codenames. What d…

I'm honestly impressed by how...well it works. Considering it's building an entire, totally custom Linux distro from scratch it requires a surprisingly little amount of hand-holding.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#17

Post by dgfitz »

This toolchain is about half my dayjob.

Bitbake is a meta-compiler, and the tool suite is very powerful. Just realize to this means you need to be an expert error-message debugger, and able to jump into (usually c/c++) code to address issues and flow patches upstream.

It really is gratifying when you finally kick out a working image.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#18

Post by cushychicken »

palata wrote: post #9

Yocto is pretty great! Unfortunately I feel like it gets a lot of criticism, but usually from people who haven't gotten to learn it. Like "I had to spend 2h on Yocto and this thing suuuuucks , I threw a docker image there and called it a day". Which is a pity, because when used correctly it's really powerful! From the article, I can't help but mention that one third of the "key terminology" is about codenames. What d…

Part of why it gets so much criticism is that Yocto’s learning curve is pure brutality.

Out of the box configurations for Yocto images and recipes are fabulous.

Trying to modify those configurations below the application layer… you’re gonna have a bad time. Opaque error messages, the whole layers vs recipes vs meta issues, etc. I also can’t shake the feeling that yocto was made to solve a chip company’s problems (I.e. supporting Linux distros for three hundred different SOCs) rather than my problems (I.e. ship working embedded software for one or two SOC platforms).

I’ve had a lot more success with buildroot as an embedded Linux build system and I recommend it very highly.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#19

Post by palata »

kierank wrote: post #13

It's crazy that you have to use this custom "embedded" tooling when the vendor should be implementing support in vanilla Linux distros.

It is not "custom embedded tooling"! It is tooling you run on your main machine to build a custom distro. Imagine you follow the "Linux from Scratch" tutorial, then start writing scripts to automate parts of that, and eventually create a framework that allows you to create a custom Linux from Scratch. After years of work you may end up with something that looks like Yocto.

The whole point of using Yocto is that you want a custom distro. You could build a totally "standard" distro with Yocto but... at this point you can also just use Gentoo or Debian or whatever works.

Re: Yocto, RockPi and SBOMs: Building modern embedded Linux images

#20

Post by bootloop »

I am actually scared of switching jobs in case my next job doesn't involve yocto.

How would I make use of the countless hours I have already invested in this piece of software? Countless keywords and the dark magic of the ever changing syntax.

But when it works it works..

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