[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Bjørn Forsman]

Hi all,

When I started out with embedded Linux, Buildroot was of great help.
It built a working cross toolchain and a rootfs for me and I was very
pleased with it. (Thanks a lot to all developers!) At the same time I
had tried OpenEmbedded (OE) without much of a success: it was too
complex for me and I could not get it to build anything. Now, about
two years later, I started using OE at work and have had very good
experiences with it. So good that I must think carefully about why I
should use Buildroot for my next project, and not OE. I guess the main
reason (for me at least) for thinking about using Buildroot is its
easy menu configuration. But at the same time it feels like OE has
more to offer in terms of its build system and its package set.

What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE does not?
And another thing: could/should the two projects be merged?

Best regards,
Bj?rn Forsman

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Will Newton]

2009/8/13 Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> When I started out with embedded Linux, Buildroot was of great help.
> It built a working cross toolchain and a rootfs for me and I was very
> pleased with it. (Thanks a lot to all developers!) At the same time I
> had tried OpenEmbedded (OE) without much of a success: it was too
> complex for me and I could not get it to build anything. Now, about
> two years later, I started using OE at work and have had very good
> experiences with it. So good that I must think carefully about why I
> should use Buildroot for my next project, and not OE. I guess the main
> reason (for me at least) for thinking about using Buildroot is its
> easy menu configuration. But at the same time it feels like OE has
> more to offer in terms of its build system and its package set.
>
> What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE does not?
> And another thing: could/should the two projects be merged?

The reasons I have chosen buildroot over OpenEmbedded are:

1. Simplicity.

OE seems to have lots of config files and an unfamiliar interface. BR
lets people configure their root fs in the same way as their kernel.

2. Bitbake.

Asking users to install often very recent versions of a leftfield tool
is difficult. BR has a minimum of external dependencies, which is
great when your users insist on using 3 year old distros. ;-)
Also Makefiles are something almost all software engineers understand
so it reduces the support burden for me.

The things I perceive to be better about OE are:

1. Wider range of packages.
2. Probably more vibrant community and more commercial involvement.

But currently I have no plans to move our userbase away from buildroot.

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Bjørn Forsman]

2009/8/13 Will Newton <will.newton@gmail.com>:
> 2009/8/13 Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> When I started out with embedded Linux, Buildroot was of great help.
>> It built a working cross toolchain and a rootfs for me and I was very
>> pleased with it. (Thanks a lot to all developers!) At the same time I
>> had tried OpenEmbedded (OE) without much of a success: it was too
>> complex for me and I could not get it to build anything. Now, about
>> two years later, I started using OE at work and have had very good
>> experiences with it. So good that I must think carefully about why I
>> should use Buildroot for my next project, and not OE. I guess the main
>> reason (for me at least) for thinking about using Buildroot is its
>> easy menu configuration. But at the same time it feels like OE has
>> more to offer in terms of its build system and its package set.
>>
>> What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE does not?
>> And another thing: could/should the two projects be merged?
>
> The reasons I have chosen buildroot over OpenEmbedded are:
>
> 1. Simplicity.
>
> OE seems to have lots of config files and an unfamiliar interface. BR
> lets people configure their root fs in the same way as their kernel.

Yes, the BR configuration system is very nice. I still don't know how
to fully customize OE builds, I just build a base image and use opkg
to add extra packages :-) (Note that I haven't spent much time trying
to build a custom image either.)

> 2. Bitbake.
>
> Asking users to install often very recent versions of a leftfield tool
> is difficult. BR has a minimum of external dependencies, which is
> great when your users insist on using 3 year old distros. ;-)
> Also Makefiles are something almost all software engineers understand
> so it reduces the support burden for me.

I wish OE could do without bitbake. But once it is installed, its not
so bad :-) Regarding distro dependencies, I believe OE does quite
well. AFAIK, all native tools that OE needs on the host are simply
built from OE recipes. This gives complete control over the build
environment. On the other hand, building all native tools makes the
initial build, which is already very long, even longer.

> The things I perceive to be better about OE are:
>
> 1. Wider range of packages.
> 2. Probably more vibrant community and more commercial involvement.

Agree. May I also add that OE built images are named by configuration
and build date, eliminating the need for manually copying/renaming the
resulting binaries so that they are not overwritten by subsequent
(experimental) builds. I remember having manually backed up many BR
binaries before :-)

Thanks for your reply, Will. I hope to hear more from BR users that
have had some experience with OE, why or for what they use BR and not
OE. Maybe I have to ask the OE mailing list if there are anyone there
with BR background too :-)

Regards,
Bj?rn Forsman

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Ulf Samuelsson]

Bj?rn Forsman skrev:
> 2009/8/13 Will Newton <will.newton@gmail.com>:
>> 2009/8/13 Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com>:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> When I started out with embedded Linux, Buildroot was of great help.
>>> It built a working cross toolchain and a rootfs for me and I was very
>>> pleased with it. (Thanks a lot to all developers!) At the same time I
>>> had tried OpenEmbedded (OE) without much of a success: it was too
>>> complex for me and I could not get it to build anything. Now, about
>>> two years later, I started using OE at work and have had very good
>>> experiences with it. So good that I must think carefully about why I
>>> should use Buildroot for my next project, and not OE. I guess the main
>>> reason (for me at least) for thinking about using Buildroot is its
>>> easy menu configuration. But at the same time it feels like OE has
>>> more to offer in terms of its build system and its package set.
>>>
>>> What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE does not?
>>> And another thing: could/should the two projects be merged?
>> The reasons I have chosen buildroot over OpenEmbedded are:
>>
>> 1. Simplicity.
>>
>> OE seems to have lots of config files and an unfamiliar interface. BR
>> lets people configure their root fs in the same way as their kernel.
> 
> Yes, the BR configuration system is very nice. I still don't know how
> to fully customize OE builds, I just build a base image and use opkg
> to add extra packages :-) (Note that I haven't spent much time trying
> to build a custom image either.)

It is BLACK MAGIC!!!
But I have something running now...

> 
>> 2. Bitbake.
>>
>> Asking users to install often very recent versions of a leftfield tool
>> is difficult. BR has a minimum of external dependencies, which is
>> great when your users insist on using 3 year old distros. ;-)
>> Also Makefiles are something almost all software engineers understand
>> so it reduces the support burden for me.
> 
> I wish OE could do without bitbake. But once it is installed, its not
> so bad :-) Regarding distro dependencies, I believe OE does quite
> well. AFAIK, all native tools that OE needs on the host are simply
> built from OE recipes. This gives complete control over the build
> environment. On the other hand, building all native tools makes the
> initial build, which is already very long, even longer.
> 

Core i7/6GB  < 2 hours for x11-gpe-image

>> The things I perceive to be better about OE are:
>>
>> 1. Wider range of packages.
>> 2. Probably more vibrant community and more commercial involvement.
> 
> Agree. May I also add that OE built images are named by configuration
> and build date, eliminating the need for manually copying/renaming the
> resulting binaries so that they are not overwritten by subsequent
> (experimental) builds. I remember having manually backed up many BR
> binaries before :-)

We have had a long discussion about this early this year.
It is not popular to call linux anything else but uImage.
I have reintroduced a proper naming scheme (in my opinion)
in my personal git on the buildroot server,
where I build 2.6.30.2, u-boot-2009.08-rc2 and at91bootstrap-2.13-rc3
for the AT91, but it needs a lot more testing.

Help appreciated.


> Thanks for your reply, Will. I hope to hear more from BR users that
> have had some experience with OE, why or for what they use BR and not
> OE. Maybe I have to ask the OE mailing list if there are anyone there
> with BR background too :-)

Buildroot is good to hand out to beginners, for them to learn.
It can do a good job for non-graphic applications.
If you want an advanced user-interface, then you go OE.

Big Guys are doing OE, but you need to spend more time to get things done.



> Regards,
> Bj?rn Forsman
> _______________________________________________
> buildroot mailing list
> buildroot at busybox.net
> http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/buildroot

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Julien Boibessot]

Hi,

Ulf Samuelsson a ?crit :
>
> Buildroot is good to hand out to beginners, for them to learn.
> It can do a good job for non-graphic applications.
> If you want an advanced user-interface, then you go OE.
>   
Correct me if I'm wrong:
If you want to build a PDA or a smartphone OE might be cool, but
otherwise it's overkill...

With Buildroot you can also build professional systems with very
advanced user-interface (by using Qt over framebuffer for example).
They will "only" need 32MBytes of RAM, fit on 16MBytes FLASH and boot in
less that 10 seconds. I'm not sure that OE can generate the same without
deeply hacking the beast.

Regards,
Julien

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "Bj?rn" == Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> writes:

Hi,

 Bj?rn> What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE
 Bj?rn> does not?  And another thing: could/should the two projects be
 Bj?rn> merged?

As several people already mentioned, BR is located elsewhere than OE
on the feature/complexity curve. It is a smaller and (imho atleast)
simpler system, which is optimized for small embedded systems, rather
than PDA-style devices, but it clearly doesn't have as many
packages/features as OE.

So it all depends on your requirements, like always.

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Bjørn Forsman]

2009/8/24 Peter Korsgaard <jacmet@uclibc.org>:
>>>>>> "Bj?rn" == Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi,
>
> ?Bj?rn> What do you guys think? What does Buildroot provide that OE
> ?Bj?rn> does not? ?And another thing: could/should the two projects be
> ?Bj?rn> merged?
>
> As several people already mentioned, BR is located elsewhere than OE
> on the feature/complexity curve. It is a smaller and (imho atleast)
> simpler system, which is optimized for small embedded systems, rather
> than PDA-style devices, but it clearly doesn't have as many
> packages/features as OE.

Funny, nobody has commented the "OE+BR merge" I mentioned. Am I the only one
dreaming of a BR with its easy configuration combined with the package
set provided
by OE? But I guess the OE bitbake tool and *.bb files makes a merge
impossible...

Well, thanks to all for the feedback. Although I'm using OE right now
(project at work),
I'm sure I will use BR again sometime. And even more, maybe contribute! Thanks
to all BR developers for helping me build my first embedded Linux system. It was
(and still is) fun!

Best regards,
Bj?rn Forsman

[Buildroot] Buildroot and OpenEmbedded

[Jean-Christian de Rivaz]

Bj?rn Forsman a ?crit :
> Funny, nobody has commented the "OE+BR merge" I mentioned. Am I the only one
> dreaming of a BR with its easy configuration combined with the package
> set provided
> by OE? But I guess the OE bitbake tool and *.bb files makes a merge
> impossible...

A possible way: Make the BR configuration tool generate the 
corresponding OE configuration for the BR supported subsets.

A better way: Create a sweet OE configuration tool, capable to make BR 
obsolete in term of user experience and system performance (size, speed, 
etc...)

In the long term, even OE will face concurrence from even better concept 
more closely related to the main current distributions. Such candidates 
could be EmDebian or the future Debian Multiarch. ScratchBox have gain 
more and more attention too.

Too many tools fragment the community. I also think that merging the 
bests features from projects with very similar goal will be a benefit 
for everyone in the long term.

Jean-Christian de Rivaz