Summary

Embedded hardware will continue to get more complex, following the trajectory set by Moore's Law. Linux has the power and the 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 the 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 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 I describe these build tools, I will describe the four elements of embedded Linux, which you can apply to all embedded Linux projects, however they are created.

The next chapter is all about the first of these, the toolchain, which you need in order to compile code for your target platform.