Summary
Embedded hardware continues to get more complex following the trajectory set by Moore’s law. Linux has the power and flexibility to make use of hardware in an efficient way. Together, we will learn how to harness that power so we can build robust products that delight our users. This book will take you through the five phases of an embedded project’s life cycle, beginning with the four elements of embedded Linux.
The sheer variety of embedded platforms and the fast pace of development lead to isolated pools of software. In many cases, you will become dependent on this software, especially the Linux kernel that is provided by your SoC or board vendor, and to a lesser extent, the toolchain.
Some SoC manufacturers are getting better at pushing their changes upstream and the maintenance of these changes is getting easier. Despite these improvements, selecting the right hardware for your embedded Linux project is still an exercise fraught with peril. Open source license compliance is another topic you need to be aware of when building products atop the embedded Linux ecosystem.
In this chapter, you were introduced to the hardware and some of the software you will use throughout this book (namely QEMU). Later on, we will examine some powerful tools that can help you create and maintain the software for your device. We cover Buildroot and dig deep into The Yocto Project. Before we tackle these build tools, we will deconstruct the four elements of embedded Linux, which you can apply to all embedded Linux projects regardless of how they are built.
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