[Buildroot] [RFC] Slides "Using Buildroot for real projects"

Thomas De Schampheleire patrickdepinguin+buildroot at gmail.com
Wed Oct 19 06:29:26 UTC 2011


Hi Arnout,

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 11:35 PM, Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be> wrote:
>
> On Monday 17 October 2011 18:47:18, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
>> The goal of the talk is to give some recommendations and best practices
>> on how to use Buildroot. As I'm sure I forgot a lot of things in my
>> slides above, I'd like to know what you, Buildroot developers/users,
>> would have to say on the topic, so that I can improve the contents of
>> this presentation.
>
>  Of course, I can't stay behind with giving my comments!  They're a bit
> broader than the earlier comments, though.
>
>  For the 'What is Buildroot slide', I would split it in a 'What' and a 'Why' slide (bottom/top half).  Also, the goal for me is to build a complete Linux-based embedded system with the minimum amount of hassle.  That means:
>  - minimal dependency on the build host's operating system (no specific bitbake or whatever package needs to be installed);
>  - reproducible builds;
>  - builds everything.
>
>  About the "Buildroot can import external toolchains": it's not the option that I would advise at this time.  A major disadvantage is that there may be inconsistencies between what buildroot thinks the toolchain can do and what it actually can (unless it's a CodeSourcery toolchain, but those use glibc) - you have to define yourself what extra stuff the toolchain has.
>
>  The board/<company>/<project>/linux-patches setup is exactly what I typically use as well.  I would like some future version of buildroot to simplify such a setup, i.e. you just configure board/<company>/<project> and buildroot looks for all the patches there.  But that's not for this presentation :-)
>
>  One typical use case that is missing: in a company with several developers, you would put a download mirror in some central location and either point
> BR2_DL_DIR or BR2_PRIMARY_SITE to it.  (BTW, now I notice that the help text of BR2_PRIMARY_SITE incorrectly claims that it only works for AUTOTARGETS.)

I noticed this as well. I fixed this in my hg/scp support patch that I
will send shortly.

>
>  Another important hint: to debug, you should use output/host/usr/bin/<arch>-gdb -ex 'set solib-absolute-prefix output/staging'.

Is this really needed?
I'm under the impression that setting sysroot is enough: 'set sysroot
output/staging'

>
>  And it may be worthwhile to talk about how you can contribute :-)  DCO, coding style, where to send it.

Best regards,
Thomas


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