We were kindly provided a copy of Embedded Linux Development with Yocto Project, written by Otavio Salvador and Daiane Angolini. It is available at Packt Publishing, either in an electronic format (DRM free) or printed.
This book will help you start with your embedded system development and integration using the Yocto Project or OpenEmbedded.
The first chapter sheds some light on the meaning of commonly misused names: Yocto Project, Poky, OpenEmbedded, BitBake. Then, it doesn’t waste time and explains how to install and use Poky to build and then run an image. The entire book is full of examples that can easily be tested, providing useful hands-on experience, using Yocto Project 1.6 (Poky 11).
The following chapters cover:
- Hob: a user friendly interface, however, it will soon be deprecated and replaced by Toaster.
- BitBake and Metadata: how to use BitBake, how to write recipes for packages or images, how to extend existing recipes, how to write new classes, how to create a layer, where to find existing layers and use them.
- The build directory layout: what the generated files are, and what their use is.
- Packaging: how to generate different package formats, how to handle a package feed and the package versions.
- The various SDKs that can be generated and their integration in Eclipse.
- Debugging the metadata: what the common issues are, how to find what is going wrong, and solving these issues.
- Debugging the applications on the target: how to generate an image with debugging tools installed.
- Available tools to help achieve copyleft compliance: in particular, how to cope with the GPL requirements.
Finally, there is a chapter dedicated to explaining how to generate and run an image on the Wandboard, an i.MX6 based community board.
The book is easy to read, with plenty of examples and useful tips. It requires some knowledge about generic embedded Linux system development (see our training) as only the Yocto Project specifics are covered. I would recommend it both for beginners wanting to learn about the Yocto Project and for developers wanting to improve their current knowledge and their recipes and also understand the BitBake internals.
Speaking of the Yocto Project, it is worth noting that Bootlin is now offering a Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded training course (detailed agenda). If you’re interested, join one of the upcoming public training sessions, or order a session at your location!
