Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2020

One of the traditional approach to build custom Linux systems for embedded devices is to use build systems such as Yocto/OpenEmbedded or Buildroot. In some cases, using a more conventional binary distribution such as Debian or Ubuntu has interesting benefits: powerful package management system, a wide selection of available packages, no need to learn a new build system, excellent security updates, and more. However, Debian or Ubuntu themselves don't really come with appropriate tooling to easily generate ready-to-use filesystem images. This talk will therefore present ELBE, an open-source tool that generates, based on a description file, a complete Debian or Ubuntu filesystem image, cross-compiles additional packages if needed, adjust the filesystem contents, etc. We will start by comparing the different approaches to build an embedded Linux system, what is the approach taken by ELBE, how it can be used to generate systems for ARM and ARM64 targets, but also how we extended it to support generating Ubuntu-based systems in addition to Debian ones.