Best way to tune a distro and to build a toolchain for it

Best way to tune a distro and to build a toolchain for it

[Valentin Longchamp]

Hello,

We have designed a processor board in our laboratory that we are going 
to use to control our robots for experiments. The board is now supported 
in OE (mx31moboard machine) and I am very happy to be able to build a 
Linux distro for our board thank to OE.

Until now I have used the Angstrom distro with success. Now since my use 
is mostly going to be for a robot with no screen (and of course no 
PIM/agenda, games and these kinds of things) I have always built a 
console-image. However now I would like to add some packages by default 
in the images that I want to build for our robot (for instance hal is 
needed by one of our softs, I would like it to be included by default).

I could do this by adding these packages in the MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS 
variable in the machine config file, but I think this is more a distro 
question.

To summarize: what would be the best way to create a "robotic version" 
of angstrom in OE ?

The second question is about toolchains. This platform is going to be 
used by many other labs that are going to use our robots or at least our 
hardware. I would like to be able to build a "sdk" for them, with all 
the libs that we include by default in their sdk (because I already fear 
all the mechanical engineers that would have to build OE ...). I can 
build meta-toolchain, but how could I tune a toolchain so that it 
includes for instance all the headers for the libs that I would add in 
my "robotic version" of anstrom ?

Thank you for your help.

Val

-- 
Valentin Longchamp, PhD Student, EPFL-STI-LSRO1
valentin.longchamp@epfl.ch, Phone: +41216937827
http://people.epfl.ch/valentin.longchamp
MEA3485, Station 9, CH-1015 Lausanne

Re: Best way to tune a distro and to build a toolchain for it

[Koen Kooi]

On 17-12-08 15:08, Valentin Longchamp wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We have designed a processor board in our laboratory that we are going
> to use to control our robots for experiments. The board is now supported
> in OE (mx31moboard machine) and I am very happy to be able to build a
> Linux distro for our board thank to OE.
>
> Until now I have used the Angstrom distro with success. Now since my use
> is mostly going to be for a robot with no screen (and of course no
> PIM/agenda, games and these kinds of things) I have always built a
> console-image. However now I would like to add some packages by default
> in the images that I want to build for our robot (for instance hal is
> needed by one of our softs, I would like it to be included by default).
>
> I could do this by adding these packages in the MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS
> variable in the machine config file, but I think this is more a distro
> question.

No, it's image question. Stuff that goes into an image is an image 
question. I have multiple devices without a screen and use angstrom on 
it without troubles. There's absolutely no need for yet another distro.

> To summarize: what would be the best way to create a "robotic version"
> of angstrom in OE ?

Create tasks and images for it. There's absolutely no need for yet 
another distro.

> The second question is about toolchains. This platform is going to be
> used by many other labs that are going to use our robots or at least our
> hardware. I would like to be able to build a "sdk" for them, with all
> the libs that we include by default in their sdk (because I already fear
> all the mechanical engineers that would have to build OE ...). I can
> build meta-toolchain, but how could I tune a toolchain so that it
> includes for instance all the headers for the libs that I would add in
> my "robotic version" of anstrom ?

Have a look at meta-sdk*.bb, that shows how you can install packages 
into a toolchain.

regards,

Koen

>
> Thank you for your help.
>
> Val
>

Re: Best way to tune a distro and to build a toolchain for it

[Valentin Longchamp]

Thank you for your answer Koen.

Koen Kooi wrote:
> On 17-12-08 15:08, Valentin Longchamp wrote:
>> We have designed a processor board in our laboratory that we are going
>> to use to control our robots for experiments. The board is now supported
>> in OE (mx31moboard machine) and I am very happy to be able to build a
>> Linux distro for our board thank to OE.
>>
>> Until now I have used the Angstrom distro with success. Now since my use
>> is mostly going to be for a robot with no screen (and of course no
>> PIM/agenda, games and these kinds of things) I have always built a
>> console-image. However now I would like to add some packages by default
>> in the images that I want to build for our robot (for instance hal is
>> needed by one of our softs, I would like it to be included by default).
>>
>> I could do this by adding these packages in the MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS
>> variable in the machine config file, but I think this is more a distro
>> question.
> 
> No, it's image question. Stuff that goes into an image is an image 
> question. I have multiple devices without a screen and use angstrom on 
> it without troubles. There's absolutely no need for yet another distro.

OK. Sorry, there are still some concepts in OE that are a little bit 
opaque to me. But I agree, it's definitely an image question. I want an 
image that would fit my needs.

> 
>> To summarize: what would be the best way to create a "robotic version"
>> of angstrom in OE ?
> 
> Create tasks and images for it. There's absolutely no need for yet 
> another distro.
> 

Of course I don't want to create yet another distro. That's what I meant 
by "tuning". But the correct concepts were tasks and an image for for 
this task.

-- 
Valentin Longchamp, PhD Student, EPFL-STI-LSRO1
valentin.longchamp@epfl.ch, Phone: +41216937827
http://people.epfl.ch/valentin.longchamp
MEA3485, Station 9, CH-1015 Lausanne

Re: Best way to tune a distro and to build a toolchain for it

[Cliff Brake]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Valentin Longchamp
<valentin.longchamp@epfl.ch> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We have designed a processor board in our laboratory that we are going to
> use to control our robots for experiments. The board is now supported in OE
> (mx31moboard machine) and I am very happy to be able to build a Linux distro
> for our board thank to OE.
>
> Until now I have used the Angstrom distro with success. Now since my use is
> mostly going to be for a robot with no screen (and of course no PIM/agenda,
> games and these kinds of things) I have always built a console-image.
> However now I would like to add some packages by default in the images that
> I want to build for our robot (for instance hal is needed by one of our
> softs, I would like it to be included by default).
>
> I could do this by adding these packages in the MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS
> variable in the machine config file, but I think this is more a distro
> question.
>
> To summarize: what would be the best way to create a "robotic version" of
> angstrom in OE ?

Define a custom image: http://bec-systems.com/web/content/view/79/9/

Cliff

-- 
=======================
Cliff Brake
http://bec-systems.com