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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

#31

Post by joezydeco »

cushychicken wrote: post #18
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.…

I've done both and I'll add that the one thing I miss about Yocto is that it could package up an SDK with installer that could be deployed on a different machine. With a single install you have the correct crosstools, libraries, and headers to build directly for target. And when we used to develop with Qt that was a huge advantage in helping others get started.

But now I use Buildroot and I get things done without all the extra anxiety.

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

#32

Post by Joel_Mckay »

cushychicken wrote: post #18
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.…

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

At one time when SoCs were RAM lean... and build specific patching, stripping and static linking was considered an acceptable tradeoff in the yocto build systems for IoT etc. The use-cases are extremely difficult to justify these days with 256MB of ram on a $5 SoC...

However, the approach was commercially unsustainable from maintainability, security, and memory-page cache-hit efficiency metrics. It should be banned given it still haunts the lower systems like a rancid fart in an elevator. =3

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

#33

Post by bibabaloo »

allo37 wrote: post #16
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.

I agree. I don't understand how people prefer buildroot. Buildroot feels like an adhoc system of glued together Makefiles, whereas yocto actually feels like it was built for purpose.

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

#34

Post by Joel_Mckay »

msarnoff wrote: post #24
codetrotter wrote: post #21

Last time I tried Yocto, some people here on HN suggested that I try Buildroot instead. I don’t see so many mentions of Buildroot in this thread yet. If you are interested in Yocto it might be worth having a look at Buildroot as well. I liked it a lot when I tried it. My thread from years ago, where people told me about Buildroot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083506 The website of Buildroot: https://buildro…

I think, in a lot of cases, the choice between Buildroot and Yocto comes down to "which one does the SoC vendor support."

Yocto is synonymous with low-end IoT these days, and causes more problems than it solves in the long-term for many folks.

Also, bootstrapping your own application launcher shell on a raw kernel is usually not a difficult task (depending on vendor firmware.) Some folks just drop a full Lua environment for an OS that fits in under 2.7MB ISO even with a modern kernel.

Nir Lichtman posted a tutorial for mere mortals here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Juz5sQyYQ

Highly recommended exercise for students =3

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

#35

Post by mostthingsweb »

msarnoff wrote: post #22

The one thing I still don't like about Yocto is the setup process. You need to check out multiple layer repositories, make sure you check out the right commit from each repository (need reproducibility!), put everything in the correct directory structure, and then set up `bblayers.conf` and `local.conf`. I've got a script that does all this, but it's still a pain. I've been thinking about putting everything in a mono…

There's ongoing work on an official setup solution, "bitbake-setup". See https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-core/topic/111....

Shameless plug, there is also my own tool, yb. It's very early days though: https://github.com/Agilent/yb

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

#36

Post by fathermarz »

As someone in the Software Supply Chain business. Yocto SBOMs are considered low quality because they include things that do and do not exist in the final compiled artifact. When you compare what exists inside, physically from a binary perspective, what is included in the manifest, and what is generated in the build root, you will find they will never align unless you get creative and map artifacts together. Today they are accepted as meeting the compliance checkbox, but once the industry matures, they will need to adjust their approach.

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

#37

Post by cushychicken »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #32
cushychicken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"Part of why it gets so much criticism is that Yocto’s learning curve is pure brutality." At one time when SoCs were RAM lean... and build specific patching, stripping and static linking was considered an acceptable tradeoff in the yocto build systems for IoT etc. The use-cases are extremely difficult to justify these days with 256MB of ram on a $5 SoC... However, the approach was commercially unsustainable from main…

Buddy what the fuck are you talking about

Yocto launched in 2010

Buildroot launched in 2005

Both of these ecosystems coexisted in the era of sub $100 embedded Linux dev boards with way more than 256MB RAM

Yocto has no excuse for making toolchain and system configuration modifications as difficult as it does.

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

#38

Post by cushychicken »

joezydeco wrote: post #31
cushychicken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I've done both and I'll add that the one thing I miss about Yocto is that it could package up an SDK with installer that could be deployed on a different machine. With a single install you have the correct crosstools, libraries, and headers to build directly for target. And when we used to develop with Qt that was a huge advantage in helping others get started. But now I use Buildroot and I get things done without al…

Fair point but buildroot reached parity with that feature by allowing you to zip a toolchain and then point to it as an external tarball.

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

#39

Post by naruhodo »

cushychicken wrote: post #18
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.…

> pure brutality

And that's not hyperbole.

It's an odd mix of convention and bespoke madness. The convention part is that you set up a few variables and if the build system of the software is a good fit to common convention, things will just tend to work.

The bespoke madness comes in when there are slight departures from common convention and you must work out what variables to set and functions to define to fix it.

There are parts of the build system that are highly reminiscent of 1980s era BASIC programming. For example, I have seen build mechanisms where you must set variables first and then include or require a file. This is analogous to setting global variables in BASIC and then calling a subroutine with GOSUB because functions with arguments haven't been invented yet.

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

#40

Post by lukeh »

msarnoff wrote: post #22

The one thing I still don't like about Yocto is the setup process. You need to check out multiple layer repositories, make sure you check out the right commit from each repository (need reproducibility!), put everything in the correct directory structure, and then set up `bblayers.conf` and `local.conf`. I've got a script that does all this, but it's still a pain. I've been thinking about putting everything in a mono…

I just use git submodules because, whilst they can be frustrating, it's a workflow I'm familiar with. Other options would be kas or gclient.
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