The Linux foundation announced Yocto Project Release 1.1 today. This release codenamed “Edison” and based on Poky 6.0 is the the second release of the project, one year after it was announced in October 2010 to provide developers with greater consistency in the software and tools they’re using across multiple architectures for embedded Linux development.
The Yocto Project reached the following milestones during the last year:
- Alignment of OpenEmbedded technology and the inclusion of OpenEmbedded representation in the Yocto Project governance structure. The projects share a common core that consists of software build recipes and core Linux components that prevent fragmentation and reinforce the OpenEmbedded methodology as an open standard for embedded Linux build systems.
- Contribution of tools and technologies such as Cross-prelink, EGLIBC, Pseudo, Shoeleather Lab (for automated testing) and Swabber have been contributed from Intel, Mentor Graphics, MontaVista Software and Wind River.
- Commercial adoption with examples such as FIC’s Pegasus platform powered by Tridium’s Niagara Framework. The Pegasus platform is an industrial tablet design that was quickly ported to Linux based on existing Yocto Project Board Support Packages. Tridium is a world leader in software frameworks, automation infrastructure technology and device-to-enterprise integration solution, and FIC is a global designer and manufacturer of mobile and commercial hardware solutions.
- Board Support Packages that include Intel’s Atom-PC, Freescale’s MPC8315e-RDB, TI’s BeagleBoard and Ubiquiti’s RouterStation Pro, among others.
Yocto Project Release 1.1 is based on Linux kernel 3.0 and consists of the following new features and resources that enable developers and third parties to more quickly and easily build embedded Linux systems:
- Multi-lib: Reduces storage and memory footprint by allowing the system developer to mix and match binaries.
- Hob: An improved graphical user experience enables developers to select target architecture, image and layer combinations, and to select or remove individual packages before building, making the use of the Yocto tools even easier. Check out the Hob training video for Yocto 1.1 below.
- Layer Tooling: Eases the integration and development of layers by “flattening” them together into a collection of meta-data, making it much easier for third parties to develop and release layers.
- Initial support for x32, allowing execution of 32-bit code with all the benefits of 64-bit mode bringing performance and footprint improvements on x86 processors.
- Small footprint/fast boot layers that make it easier to develop tiny embedded systems (less than 8MB of memory) with Yocto.
- New packages and components include 3G cellular data support and advanced btrfs filesystem, which improve applicability of the Yocto Project tools to new segments.
- New Yocto Project Developer Guide: This document provides important information on how to get started in open source, Board Support Package and kernel development.
Looking forward, Yocto Project 1.2 is expected to be released in April 2012. It should improve the usability of the build system and add new features and improvement such as hob v2, better Windows support, better QA infrastructure and many more improvements to the kernel, infrastructure, BSP, ADT Tools and Support, etc.. Please visit Yocto Project 1.2 Features page for details.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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