Use of buildroot in an embedded linux project

Hi everyone,

I am working on a project about building embedded linux systems, and I have to choose between many tools that generate cross gnu toolchains and root filesystem (buildroot, scratchbox, ELDK...). So, it would be grateful if someone could tell me about the advantages of using buildroot and about its limitations, because I heard that we found some difficulties to cross compile certain packages, like Kerberos5.

Any comment is welcome.
Thanks.

Hichem.


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Le Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:06:44 +0100,
Hichem Boussetta <[email protected]> a ?crit :

I don't have all the advantages/drawbacks in my mind, but here are a few.

Drawbacks :

* Only uClibc toolchains can be generated by Buildroot ;

* External toolchain support is still experimental (this is only a problem if you plan to use a toolchain that has been generated by Buildroot) ;

* No package management (ipkg, opkg) like you could have with OpenEmbedded, for example.

Advantages :

* Simple enough so that a single human being can manage to understand how it works and tune it according to the needs of the project, and that you don't spend 5 days trying to figure out how the damn thing works.

* Pretty good support from the Buildroot community.

Thomas

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