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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

#41

Post by rcxdude »

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…

It's powerful but bitbake wasn't so much designed as emerged from a primordial soup, it's easy to go completely insane trying to debug it due to the amount of action-at-distance recipes and layers can create. (try playing the "where did this compile flag come from?" game)

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

#42

Post by svnt »

cushychicken wrote: post #37
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

There is a big difference in just about everything relating to selling something with a sub $10 BOM and something approximating a “sub $100 dev board.”

The difference in unit volumes drives wide variances in tolerances of additional development difficulty/cost.

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

#43

Post by Joel_Mckay »

svnt wrote: post #42
cushychicken wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a big difference in just about everything relating to selling something with a sub $10 BOM and something approximating a “sub $100 dev board.” The difference in unit volumes drives wide variances in tolerances of additional development difficulty/cost.

Indeed, the economics of chip component choices at scale change development priorities. Depends on the use-case, and how much people are willing to compromise on the design. Performant SoC and Flash memory are no longer premium budget choices.

Some people seem irrationally passionate about the code smell of their own brand. =3

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

#44

Post by svnt »

fathermarz wrote: post #36

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 th…

How would yocto adjust their approach to improve their SBOM output?

It would seem to be a nearly impossible thing to automate.

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

#45

Post by nrclark »

rcxdude wrote: post #41
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…

It's powerful but bitbake wasn't so much designed as emerged from a primordial soup, it's easy to go completely insane trying to debug it due to the amount of action-at-distance recipes and layers can create. (try playing the "where did this compile flag come from?" game)

I don't disagree, but wanted to note- if you're ever stuck trying to trace a value, you can see everything that went into its calculation by using "bitbake -e".

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

#47

Post by synergy20 »

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…

buildroot to bringup, yocto to ship

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

#48

Post by xedrac »

bibabaloo wrote: post #33
allo37 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yocto feels like a ball of mud duct taped together, but thankfully has good documentation. It reminds me of CMake. Buildroot is nice for relatively simple situations. Nixos is arguably better than both.

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

#49

Post by genewitch »

dima55 wrote: post #12
Palomides wrote: post #4

>you can’t run “apt update” if you want to get a little weird, you can tell yocto to compile everything into deb packages and host them yourself with something like aptly

Or you can, you know, just run Debian.

i was going to just comment "but systemd" but i just found out debian ostensibly supports uninstalling it and installing openRC instead and that makes me like debian more. I use debian for generic VMs, prod VMs are 50/50 gentoo and ubuntu. I've been messing with Devuan too as my primary linux VM on my desktop PC. At one point i had it booting to fully logged in in around 8 seconds (after the bootloader selection thing.) unfortunately i broke that feature so now it takes like 40 seconds. But it is also openRC (there's a pattern here)

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

#50

Post by jvanderbot »

klysm wrote: post #46

I think long term yocto and build root are going to be replaced by container tooling. Theres not that big of a difference between compiling an OS image and building a container image.

Well one difference is that docker lives well above the metal and in a nice cozy environment on mostly standard operating systems and yocto builds that nice cozy environment for all kinds of nonstandard hardware.
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