Embedded Bits

I’d like to introduce something that I’m quite passionate about at the moment and it’s a new product I’m managing at work called ‘Little Blue Linux‘ – It’s a complete Linux distribution that provides everything a developer could possibly need to get started with embedded applications development and more importantaly everything is already set up and configured so you can start writing your first application or custom Embedded Linux Distribution (BSP) in less than 20 minutes from first boot – and that’s not an exaggeration.

Little Blue Linux Logo

More often than not when it comes to evaluating the use of Linux on an embdedded development board such as the Renesas RSK+ SH7203 or SH7670 you often want to test the ground and write a demo application or proof of concept. For a well-seasoned embdeded Linux developer this task is straight forward and if any problems come up on the way they are likely to be ironed out quickly due to their many years of experience…

…however for the rest of us this process can seem over complicated, challenging and always time consuming – if anything goes wrong, for example being presented with some hiddious error message, the temptation to give up becomes a hard one to resist. Besides why should we need to know or care about the inner working of the Linux kernel or tool-chain to write an application?

It’s probably quite useful to take a brief look at what’s involved in translating source code into an application which can run on an embedded devleopment board. The first step is to install a Linux operating system on a development machine – as you can imagine most of the tools required to build a Linux application are designed to run on Linux. After selecting a suitable OS and installing it the next step is to install the various software packages required to support development. Next we need to obtain and build the revelant tool-chains and board support packages for our development board. Only at this point can we consider building our application and then worry about deploying onto the development board. Without going into too much detail – each of these steps can prove challenging or time-consuming. For example, a typical way to deploy an application during development is to use a Network File System (NFS) – however setting this up requires installing NFS on your development machine and then spending quite a bit of time figuring out how to configure it.

Little Blue Linux is provided on a live USB stick (or CD-ROM) so there is no need to re-partition your hard drisk in order to make room. The other great thing about a live CD is that moments after boot everything is set up ready to go – so rather than spend hours figuring out which packages are required or how to set up NFS you can start writing code – and even this step is easier – In fact, the main feature of Little Blue Linux is an application aptly named Igloo that is based around the very popular and open-source application – Eclipse. Igloo provides a complete integrated development envrionment (IDE) that allows you to develop applications, embedded linux distributions and you can do all that without having to touch the command line or learn how to use Linux text editors. Deployment is automatic and debugging is just as easy.

Though it’s worth mentioning that Little Blue Linux can provide more than just a way to quickly write demo applications for a proof of concept. The BSP project wizard allows you to create an embedded linux distribution suitable for your development board by selecting components from a list of packages – for example to create a minimal BSP you can select the kernel, u-boot and busybox packages. You can easily import your application into your BSP design, customise the configurations of your chosen packages (e.g. the kernel, busybox) and finally tweak some of the files of the distribution for your purpose – perhaps to customise how the device boots. During this time you can easily test your customised BSP and when you are ready for production you can let Igloo generate a binary image suitable for flashing!

Little Blue Linux is very new and we’re still working hard to fine tune some of the features and fully test it – however it will be launched very shortly – just in time for the Embedded World Exhibition. For more information or to try out a free evaluation edition visit the product’s home page – If you’re new to embedded applications development it’s a fantastic way to get started – Let me know how you get on.

Tags: BSP, Eclipse, Embedded Linux, Embedded World, Igloo, Linux, Little Blue Linux, MPC Data, Renesas, RSK+, SH7203, SH7670

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 8:53 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.