Yoctoproject is a framework for creating Linux distributions for embedded devices,
its layering mechanism makes it easy to add Linux to new target devices with highly
customization for a particular platform, it can include custom start-up scripts,
software packages build with a high degree of optimization for a particular architecture
and different user interfaces from full Gnome desktop to a simple serial console.
Yocto has 2 basic layers, board support packages layer and core layer; In the BSP layer
is where we include all the custom software and configuration tweaks for a particular
platform; The core layer provides the common software stack to provide from a command
line interface to a desktop interface. A third layer could be added to provide additional
user interfaces LXDE, XFCE, and more; YP is quite flexible and that's one of it major strengths.
As part of Yocto core layer there is two graphical system environments available to build out
the box, sato-desktop and qt4-demo, Sato is a GNOME Mobile based integrated user environment
from its original project web site [1] "Sato is designed for devices with VGA sized
high DPI touchscreen displays such as those found on smartphones and PDAs. Developed
with a focus on efficiency and speed, Sato works smoothly on handheld and other embedded
hardware. It will sit neatly on top of any device using the GNOME Mobile stack, providing
a well defined user experience."
As the name implies qt4-demo image builds the qt examples and demos applications, at power-up
the imx53 QSB starts the "Example and Demos Launcher" where we can access all demos available.
See the images for a few examples. Additionally to cross-compile qt4 it also builds and install
the Qt4 SDK for developing new applications. For more information on Qt [2]
The overall project goal of meta-freescale is to get the best Linux support for iMx platforms
and we have found several problems that prevent us to getting it right from the start, one is the
traditional way that Freescale distributes the release BSP packages for the different platforms it's
hard to track all the changes that the boot loader and kernel suffer from release to release,
as well as the gstreamer fsl plugins, and related 3D libs (amd-gpu-x11 binaries). It will help if
all public available software pieces could be online at git.freescale.com.
Here [3],[4] are some instructions to getting starting using meta-freescale layer.
Want to contribute join the imxcommunity Yocto/OE group [5] and get the meta-freescale code from [6].
[1] http://www.pokylinux.org/about/
[2] http://developer.qt.nokia.com/doc/qt-4.8/demos.html
http://qt-project.org/
[3] http://www.imxdev.org/wiki/index.php?title=Yoctoproject
[4] http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/yocto-project-qs/yocto-project-qs.html
[5] http://imxcommunity.org/group/i-mx-openembedded-yocto
[6] https://github.com/aalonso/meta-freescale
