[Buildroot] [PATCH 06/12] manual: introduction.txt: enhance Buildroot presentation

Samuel Martin s.martin49 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 18 20:31:30 UTC 2013


* add a "What is Buildroot and what is it not" section
* add a "Buildroot's principles" section

Signed-off-by: Samuel Martin <s.martin49 at gmail.com>

---
changes v1 -> v2:
- misc. typo fixes and rewording (ThomasDS)

Signed-off-by: Samuel Martin <s.martin49 at gmail.com>
---
 docs/manual/introduction.txt | 45 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 45 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/manual/introduction.txt b/docs/manual/introduction.txt
index c014565..ff3607f 100644
--- a/docs/manual/introduction.txt
+++ b/docs/manual/introduction.txt
@@ -25,3 +25,48 @@ comes with default configurations for several boards available
 off-the-shelf. Besides this, a number of third-party projects are based on,
 or develop their BSP footnote:[BSP: Board Support Package] or
 SDK footnote:[SDK: Software Development Kit] on top of Buildroot.
+
+What is Buildroot and what is it not
+------------------------------------
+
+Buildroot is:
+
+* a community-driven project;
+* a tool used in the industry;
+* targeting embedded, rather small, often headless, devices.
+
+
+Buildroot is *not*:
+
+* a _classic Linux-based distribution_, this means:
+
+** Buildroot does not use any package manager to populate the root
+   filesystem, this means there is no way to update only one package
+   of a root filesystem built by Buildroot without regenerating the
+   whole root filesystem;
+** Buildroot does not keep track of each package's content;
+** Buildroot does not provide as many packages as others distributions
+   do; so, some packages may not be available yet because the
+   community does not need them or thinks they are not suitable for
+   embedded targets.
+
+* Root filesystems generated by Buildroot are not intended to be used
+  for native development; so they do not contain any development file
+  (no headers, no static libraries, no native compiler for the
+  target), nor documentation.
+
+Buildroot's principles
+----------------------
+
+* Easy to use
+* Fast to build
+* Small footprint of the generated images footnote:[the smallness of
+  the image footprint mostly depends on the target device and its
+  application(s)]
+* Easy to hack
+* Being generic, but allowing customization:
+
+** Provide support for SoCs, rather than board specific configuration
+   (though Buildroot comes with a set of default configurations for a
+   bunch of boards);
+** Provide default configurations that can be easily overriden.
-- 
1.8.4.1



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