You're reading from Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

Product type Book

Published in May 2021

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781789530384

Pages 758 pages

Edition 3rd Edition

Languages

Concepts

Embedded Systems

Authors (2):

Frank Vasquez

Chris Simmonds

View More author details

Table of Contents (27) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: Elements of Embedded Linux

2. Chapter 1: Starting Out

3. Chapter 2: Learning about Toolchains

4. Chapter 3: All about Bootloaders

5. Chapter 4: Configuring and Building the Kernel

6. Chapter 5: Building a Root Filesystem

7. Chapter 6: Selecting a Build System

8. Chapter 7: Developing with Yocto

9. Chapter 8: Yocto Under the Hood

10. Section 2: System Architecture and Design Decisions

11. Chapter 9: Creating a Storage Strategy

12. Chapter 10: Updating Software in the Field

13. Chapter 11: Interfacing with Device Drivers

14. Chapter 12: Prototyping with Breakout Boards

15. Chapter 13: Starting Up – The init Program

16. Chapter 14: Starting with BusyBox runit

17. Chapter 15: Managing Power

18. Section 3: Writing Embedded Applications

19. Chapter 16: Packaging Python

20. Chapter 17: Learning about Processes and Threads

21. Chapter 18: Managing Memory

22. Section 4: Debugging and Optimizing Performance

23. Chapter 19: Debugging with GDB

24. Chapter 20: Profiling and Tracing

25. Chapter 21: Real-Time Programming

26. Other Books You May Enjoy

Introducing device trees

If you are working with Arm or PowerPC SoCs, you are almost certainly going to encounter device trees at some point. This section aims to give you a quick overview of what they are and how they work. We will revisit the topic of device trees repeatedly throughout the course of this book.

A device tree is a flexible way of defining the hardware components of a computer system. Bear in mind that a device tree is just static data, not executable code. Usually, the device tree is loaded by the bootloader and passed to the kernel, although it is possible to bundle the device tree with the kernel image itself to cater for bootloaders that are not capable of loading them separately.

The format is derived from a Sun Microsystems bootloader known as OpenBoot, which was formalized as the Open Firmware specification, which is IEEE standard IEEE1275-1994. It was used in PowerPC-based Macintosh computers and so was a logical choice for the PowerPC Linux port. Since...