Mastering Embedded Linux Programming: Create fast and reliable embedded solutions with Linux 5.4 and the Yocto Project 3.1 (Dunfell) , Third Edition

Really good book, full of schematics, I like it.

Caveat - I work for a software company that is mentioned in the book, which is how I became acquainted with one of the authors. So I probably have some biases.This book could easily be a college textbook. In a good way - a textbook that reads well and that you keep as a handy reference. The book covers a wide gamut - from bootloaders to kernels to developing with Yocto to profiling & tracing. It's a good progression. It definitely demystified some concepts for me, especially related to kernels. Even though I skimmed some chapters, later chapters still made sense - a sign of good writing.So who is this book for? IMHO, it's for people that are familiar with at least a few of the concepts (chapters) in the book. But want to learn the concepts & details in the other chapters, and generally go deeper. And importantly, it's the kind of book where you can read it as you need it e.g. read a few relevant chapter when you have a related work project coming up.

A good, solid book book detailing how to create embedded Linux systems, mainly concentrating on the Yocto build system but it does touch on Buildroot and has a section on how to roll your own.I have not had the time to read it all yet but the sections i have read, have been clear and instructive.I bought this book to pair with a Coursera course I was taking and it was a good match.

Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book to review.This is an extremely thorough tutorial, well-organized and well-written. The authors do an excellent job of explaining concepts and showing examples that go into the fine details. They also provide references for further reading, so the book forms the root of a curated study tree. This gives you guidance on navigating the vast ocean of additional material so you can focus on just what you need at the moment.One of the real strengths is that it covers multiple ways of doing things, for multiple targets. It's very hands-on, addressing a number of practical questions that embedded Linux novices will have. Even if you only end up using 10% of the material, it will be a win, saving you hours of frustration and searching for information. I’ve stumbled into these various tools and fought enough of these battles to wish I’d had this book ages ago.It covers doing things manually, a step at a time, and two build automation systems, buildroot and Yocto.It covers 3 different Linux targets: QEMU, Raspberry Pi 4, and Beagle Bone Black. This is a powerful mix.- QEMU is a machine emulator and virtualizer that allows you to emulate a variety of target systems on your development host. That means you can test your actual code and system before you have hardware, for multiple different hardware targets.- Raspberry Pi is a powerful and accessible Linux platform with full desktop system capability and communications. It’s an excellent way to transition non-embedded developers to embedded work.- Beagle Bone Black is a more typical embedded platform.The combination of these gives you a wide range of options for learning and development environments. You can experiment with a variety of different emulated platforms and processors, then try it out on real hardware. That will you the background to apply it to other hardware.The book is divided into 4 sections:“Section 1: Elements of Embedded Linux" covers configuring and building embedded Linux systems. It covers getting setup to work with the 3 targets, toolchains and cross-compiling, working with bootloaders, configuring and building the kernel, the root filesystem, and working with the buildroot and Yocto build systems. This takes you step by step getting your Linux distro from source code to running on your target."Section 2: System Architecture and Design Decisions" covers system-level architecture. It covers flash storage strategy for system and user partitions, field software updates and OTA (Over The Air update), working with device drivers, working with breakout boards, system startup, and power management."Section 3: Writing Embedded Applications" covers applications that run on embedded Linux. Since Python has become so popular for embedded machine learning applications, it covers using Python with several virtualization methods. Then it covers more conventional embedded system topics with processes, threads, and memory management, including memory mapping."Section 4: Debugging and Optimizing Performance" covers how to evaluate problems and performance. It covers a number of debugging and tracing tools, for both kernel and userspace. It finishes up with real-time programming, where the system needs to be truly deterministic in responding to events within defined deadlines in order to be deemed to be working properly, and missed deadlines have consequences.Could it have more on any given topic? Of course. Any book with "mastering" in the title is claiming a high bar. But for each each of these topics, it covers a number of tools and practical usage. One of the challenges of working with Linux is that there are multiple ways of doing things due to its open-source nature. Different developers have taken different approaches to the same problems. That makes it more difficult to master all possibilities, but offers more flexibility to meet your needs. It also means that a single book covering all of them in full detail would require thousands of pages.This book provides a roadmap for further study, with hints, advice, hands-on examples you can try yourself, and recommended reading. The real value it provides is in the practical guidance, getting you up and running on the right path quickly.