State of the Art Embedded LinuxBuild Systems

Abstract: Modern-day microprocessors are powerful and miniature to a point they are present in varied use cases ranging from robotics to the automotive industry. The requirements on these tiny computing devices for these applications require high level operating systems such as Linux, often referred to as Embedded Linux in this scenario. Many versions of the Linux operating system are open source and freely available to modify, the source code it self available freely for any organisation to tailor to their needs. This has resulted in numerous organisations, private entities and even industries acquiring microprocessor from one chip vendor, spin up their version of Linux based on the free version, and then use it in their products which sell in millions of quantities. This has directly resulted in the creation of multiple methods of creating a Linux based operating system. These Build Systems, which provide a set of tools and functionalities to create a Linux Based Operatingsystems as per the requirements of the use case, differ in their approach to create the final operating system. These approaches affect the long term maintenance of the final product and the Linux Operating System. While some Build Systems focus on ease of creation, others focus on maintainability of the software product,while yet others can focus solely on the requirements of the Operating Systems and the applications required to run on it. Each Build System thus focuses on avariety of aspects, and to choose one which will both meet the short and long term goals of the project is critical when the final product can range in quantities of millions. This report is aimed at comparing three such major Embedded Linux Build Systems, Buildroot, Yocto, and ELBE. The report attempts to provide the prosand cons of using each of these Build Systems, and in the end, provide suggestions based on possible scenarios in which each can be better than the other two.