One of the biggest advantages of OS-based development on platforms such as embedded Linux is that it's so similar to a regular desktop Linux installation. Especially when running an OS such as a Debian-based Linux distribution (Armbian, Raspbian, and others) on SoCs, we have practically the same tools available, with the entire package manager, compiler collections, and libraries available with a few keystrokes.
This is, however, also its biggest pitfall.
We can write code, copy it over to the SBC, compile it there, run the test, and make changes to the code before repeating the process. Or, we can even write the code on the SBC itself, essentially using it as our sole development platform.
The main reasons why we should never do this are as follows:
- A modern PC is much faster.
- Testing on real hardware should never be done until the final stages of development.
- Automated integration testing is made much harder.
Here, the first point seems fairly obvious. What takes a single...
