In the preceding chapters, we covered the four elements of embedded Linux and showed you step-by-step how to build a toolchain, a bootloader, a kernel, a root filesystem, and then combined them into a basic embedded Linux system. And there are a lot of steps! Now, it is time to look at ways to simplify the process by automating it as much as possible. I will look at how embedded build systems can help and look at two of them in particular: Buildroot and the Yocto Project. Both are complex and flexible tools, which would require an entire book to describe fully how they work. In this chapter, I only want to show you the general ideas behind build systems. I will show you how to build a simple device image to get an overall feel of the system, and then how to make some useful changes using the Nova board example from the previous chapters.

In this chapter...