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

Product typeBook
Published inMay 2021
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781789530384
Edition3rd Edition
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Authors (2):
Frank Vasquez
Frank Vasquez
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Frank Vasquez

Frank Vasquez is an independent software consultant specializing in consumer electronics. He has over a decade of experience designing and building embedded Linux systems. During that time, he has shipped numerous devices including a rackmount DSP audio server, a diver-held sonar camcorder, and a consumer IoT hotspot. Before his career as an embedded Linux engineer, Frank was a database kernel developer at IBM where he worked on DB2. He lives in Silicon Valley.
Read more about Frank Vasquez

Chris Simmonds
Chris Simmonds
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Chris Simmonds

Chris Simmonds is a software consultant and trainer living in southern England. He has almost two decades of experience in designing and building open-source embedded systems. He is the founder and chief consultant at 2net Ltd, which provides professional training and mentoring services in embedded Linux, Linux device drivers, and Android platform development. He has trained engineers at many of the biggest companies in the embedded world, including ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Ericsson, and General Dynamics. He is a frequent presenter at open source and embedded conferences, including the Embedded Linux Conference and Embedded World.
Read more about Chris Simmonds

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Distributing binaries

Mainstream Linux distributions are, in most cases, constructed from collections of binary (precompiled) packages in either RPM or DEB format. RPM stands for the Red Hat package manager and is used in Red Hat, SUSE, Fedora, and other distributions based
on them. Debian and Debian-derived distributions, including Ubuntu and Mint, use
the Debian package manager format known as DEB. In addition, there is a lightweight format specific to embedded devices known as the Itsy package format or IPK, which is based on DEB.

The ability to include a package manager on the device is one of the big differentiators between build systems. Once you have a package manager on the target device, you have an easy path to deploy new packages to it and to update the existing ones. I will talk about the implications of this in Chapter 10, Updating Software in the Field.

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Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition
Published in: May 2021Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781789530384

Authors (2)

author image
Frank Vasquez

Frank Vasquez is an independent software consultant specializing in consumer electronics. He has over a decade of experience designing and building embedded Linux systems. During that time, he has shipped numerous devices including a rackmount DSP audio server, a diver-held sonar camcorder, and a consumer IoT hotspot. Before his career as an embedded Linux engineer, Frank was a database kernel developer at IBM where he worked on DB2. He lives in Silicon Valley.
Read more about Frank Vasquez

author image
Chris Simmonds

Chris Simmonds is a software consultant and trainer living in southern England. He has almost two decades of experience in designing and building open-source embedded systems. He is the founder and chief consultant at 2net Ltd, which provides professional training and mentoring services in embedded Linux, Linux device drivers, and Android platform development. He has trained engineers at many of the biggest companies in the embedded world, including ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Ericsson, and General Dynamics. He is a frequent presenter at open source and embedded conferences, including the Embedded Linux Conference and Embedded World.
Read more about Chris Simmonds