[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Ezequiel Garcia]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a project where the customer has decided to use uCLinux
as the base distribution on a MMU platform.

Can anyone give me any insights on what would be the differences between
this choice, and choosing buildroot instead?

AFAIK, they're both source-oriented, uclibc-based distributions.
uCLinux seems more
biased towards MMU-less platforms, but since this is not the case, I'd
like to know
if there's something I'm missing, before I suggest my customer to try
Buildroot instead.

Thanks a lot!
-- 
    Ezequiel

[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Stephan Hoffmann]

Am 24.06.2013 19:57, schrieb Ezequiel Garcia:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm working on a project where the customer has decided to use uCLinux
> as the base distribution on a MMU platform.
>
> Can anyone give me any insights on what would be the differences between
> this choice, and choosing buildroot instead?
Hello,

one of the biggest differences is that uClinux comes with all the
sourcecode in one giant repository while buildroot downloads only the
sourcecode that you selected for your project.

Regards

Stephan
>
> AFAIK, they're both source-oriented, uclibc-based distributions.
> uCLinux seems more
> biased towards MMU-less platforms, but since this is not the case, I'd
> like to know
> if there's something I'm missing, before I suggest my customer to try
> Buildroot instead.
>
> Thanks a lot!

[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Ezequiel Garcia,

On Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:57:08 -0300, Ezequiel Garcia wrote:

> I'm working on a project where the customer has decided to use uCLinux
> as the base distribution on a MMU platform.

On a platform that has a MMU? Using uClinux-dist doesn't seem like a
very wise choice in this case. Which CPU architecture is this platform
using?

> Can anyone give me any insights on what would be the differences between
> this choice, and choosing buildroot instead?
> 
> AFAIK, they're both source-oriented, uclibc-based distributions.

Buildroot is not limited to uClibc. It can use glibc or eglibc
toolchains just fine, and build systems with those C libraries.

> uCLinux seems more
> biased towards MMU-less platforms, but since this is not the case, I'd
> like to know
> if there's something I'm missing, before I suggest my customer to try
> Buildroot instead.

As Stephan mentions, uClinux-dist stores the complete source tree of
most packages directly in the uClinux-dist code base, which makes it
quite huge. Buildroot instead always downloads the upstream tarball or
Git repository, and only stores in its source tree a few patches for
some packages, when needed to make them cross-compile properly. I
believe this, by itself, already makes Buildroot a bit more convenient
to use.

Being on the uclinux-dist-dev and uclinux-dev mailing list since about 3
years or so, I can also say that the amount of e-mails about
uClinux-dist is very very low, almost inexistent. Maybe those are no
longer the right mailing lists for uClinux-dist development, I'm not
sure. There is some regular traffic on those lists, but it's only about
Linux kernel support for non-MMU architectures, not the uClinux-dist
build system.

There are apparently some not too old releases of uClinux-dist (october
2012), but I'm not sure where the development is happening since the
CVS repository reference on the project web site seems to contain only
very old stuff.

I believe that one good indication is that Analog Devices was using
uClinux-dist as the build system offered to their Blackfin customers,
and last year, they have switched to use Buildroot instead.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Ezequiel Garcia]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:57:08 -0300, Ezequiel Garcia wrote:
>
>> I'm working on a project where the customer has decided to use uCLinux
>> as the base distribution on a MMU platform.
>
> On a platform that has a MMU? Using uClinux-dist doesn't seem like a
> very wise choice in this case.

Indeed, I'm under the same impression.

> Which CPU architecture is this platform
> using?
>

Nios2

>> Can anyone give me any insights on what would be the differences between
>> this choice, and choosing buildroot instead?
>>
>> AFAIK, they're both source-oriented, uclibc-based distributions.
>
> Buildroot is not limited to uClibc. It can use glibc or eglibc
> toolchains just fine, and build systems with those C libraries.
>

Right.

>> uCLinux seems more
>> biased towards MMU-less platforms, but since this is not the case, I'd
>> like to know
>> if there's something I'm missing, before I suggest my customer to try
>> Buildroot instead.
>
> As Stephan mentions, uClinux-dist stores the complete source tree of
> most packages directly in the uClinux-dist code base, which makes it
> quite huge. Buildroot instead always downloads the upstream tarball or
> Git repository, and only stores in its source tree a few patches for
> some packages, when needed to make them cross-compile properly. I
> believe this, by itself, already makes Buildroot a bit more convenient
> to use.
>
> Being on the uclinux-dist-dev and uclinux-dev mailing list since about 3
> years or so, I can also say that the amount of e-mails about
> uClinux-dist is very very low, almost inexistent. Maybe those are no
> longer the right mailing lists for uClinux-dist development, I'm not
> sure. There is some regular traffic on those lists, but it's only about
> Linux kernel support for non-MMU architectures, not the uClinux-dist
> build system.
>
> There are apparently some not too old releases of uClinux-dist (october
> 2012), but I'm not sure where the development is happening since the
> CVS repository reference on the project web site seems to contain only
> very old stuff.
>

Well, this is my very same concern: the lack of a healthy community
on the uCLinux side. I can it's a good choice for MMU-less platforms
given packages have been heavily patched. But this is not the case,
and hence my perplexity.

Since this platforms come in two flavors (MMU and MMU-less) I was almost sure
the reason is mostly historical.

It's nice to check you agree Buildroot it's a good choice.

> I believe that one good indication is that Analog Devices was using
> uClinux-dist as the build system offered to their Blackfin customers,
> and last year, they have switched to use Buildroot instead.
>

Mm, that's a nice hint to sell Buildroot :-)

-- 
    Ezequiel

[Buildroot] [Q] Buildroot vs uCLinux

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Ezequiel Garcia,

On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 10:19:07 -0300, Ezequiel Garcia wrote:


> > Which CPU architecture is this platform
> > using?
> 
> Nios2

Nice! However, beware that Buildroot has no support for NIOS2. That
said, if you have prebuilt known-working toolchains for NIOS2, adding
support for this architecture in Buildroot is not very complicated.

Patches welcome!

> > There are apparently some not too old releases of uClinux-dist (october
> > 2012), but I'm not sure where the development is happening since the
> > CVS repository reference on the project web site seems to contain only
> > very old stuff.
> 
> Well, this is my very same concern: the lack of a healthy community
> on the uCLinux side. I can it's a good choice for MMU-less platforms
> given packages have been heavily patched. But this is not the case,
> and hence my perplexity.

Correct, we don't have as many noMMU fixes in Buildroot as uClibc-dist
has, but we're working on this progressively.

> Since this platforms come in two flavors (MMU and MMU-less) I was almost sure
> the reason is mostly historical.

Most likely yes.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com