Timesys: Overview of Embedded Linux Build System for element14 SABRE Lite

Timesys’s LinuxLink is the industry’s most easy-to-use embedded Linux framework for platform and application development that enables developers to build a fully customized embedded Linux product. LinuxLink provides a complete and affordable solution for teams of all sizes.

LinuxLink delivers a seamless and easy-to-use development workflow that helps engineering teams of all sizes — whether new to embedded Linux or with years of experience — bring products to market, faster. LinuxLink combines high ease of use with advanced customization and integration capabilities to meet the entire spectrum of product development needs — throughout the entire product lifecycle. And, LinuxLink includes unmetered, responsive support for when developers need a helping hand.

Key Features and Benefits

• Reduces the time, cost and risk associated with building commercial quality products using open source Linux
• Build embedded applications in hours with an easy-to-use, cloud-based wizard
• Enables deep customization of your Linux distribution and integration of third-party and proprietary software on your desktop
• Enables easy maintenance of your product’s Linux platform — beginning with building the application on a development kit through productizing and maintaining it on an off-the-shelf or custom board
• Includes expert, live support
• Available for a wide range of popular architectures, including ARM, Power Architecture, MIPS, x86, and more
• Supports more than 100 different application processors and SoCs, and more than 150 hardware platforms — with more being added as the market evolves

LinuxLink FREE Edition

LinuxLink FREE Edition is an easy-to-use, award-winning cloud-based edition that enables developers to quickly boot embedded Linux on their development kit or reference board — without having to first set up a development environment.

With LinuxLink FREE Edition, developers can use a sing tool to evaluate multiple processors. LinuxLink FREE Edition’s intuitive web wizard enables developers to build a custom board support package (BSP) and matching software development kit (SDK) for their development board in a few minutes. They can choose to create an initial build by using a "starting point" or create a new build from scratch. Timesys starting points are prebuilt so they can be used immediately or they can be used as a template for a custom platform.

LinuxLink FREE Edition helps developers:

• Easily configure embedded Linux on multiple architectures, boards, processors.
• Quickly prototype and benchmark common applications on their development kit.
• Easily perform cross-compilation of complex packages.
• Eliminate complexity and errors by receiving 'just in time' guidance — Based on best practices and board vendor recommendations, FREE Edition’s ‘Advice Engine’ automatically provides recommendations about packages and libraries.
• Easily maintain products over their lifetime by staying current with community updates consisting of automated alerts that are relevant to your specific application.

LinuxLink PRO Edition

LinuxLink PRO enables maximum customization and control of your platform and application development. It combines an innovative build system, pre-tested software, comprehensive suite of development tools and responsive support at a price that fits even small teams' budgets. The LinuxLink PRO Edition provides both command line and IDE-based development. It simplifies and speeds up the entire product development lifecycle by allowing developers to:

• Build a Custom Platform
  • Build a root file system (RFS) from the ground — up start small and add only the features your product requires
  • Reconfigure, patch and modify the Linux kernel
  • Use your own Linux kernel tree
  • Add, remove, modify and update packages in the RFS design
• Develop Differentiated Applications
  • Use TimeStorm IDE to start application development — without waiting for hardware or platform to be finalized
  • Code, test and debug while staying within the familiar IDE environment
  • Meet Critical Embedded Product Requirements, including small memory footprint and low power consumption
• Integrate
  • Integrate third-party software (even binaries)
  • Integrate your value-add application
  • Optimize your Linux images for deployment on various media

And finally, with LinuxLink PRO, you can use what you already have, so you don’t have to start over.

Timesys LinuxLink offers a suite of powerful development tools that have been cross built, integrated, configured and tested for your processor and associated development kit. The Tools  provides immediate support to debug, analyze performance, execution paths and memory, including leak detection, benchmark and validate Linux kernel and API conformance.

TimeStorm IDE

TimeStorm is Timesys’ Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides application developers with a toolset that expertly handles embedded chores like cross-compiling and remote debugging while including support for advanced features like profiling, testing and memory leak detection.

TimeStorm offers support for many powerful plug-ins including:

• Cross Toolchain Plugin to easily manage any number of cross toolchains
• Target Management Plugin makes downloading, running and debugging on the target simple, intuitive and fast
• EGIT — For tight integration with the git version control system
• Remote Systems Explorer/ Target Management — A set of tools to communicate with and explore a target and its file system
• GDB and JTAG for source and assembly level debugging
• Integration between the C/C++ Developer Toolkit (CDT) Code Analysis tool and native Linux tools such as GCov, GProf, OProfile, and Valgrind to reveal many static analysis problems while you type
• Visualization and analysis tools for Linux tracing tools LTTng and SystemTap
• Qt Plug-ins for building Rich Multimedia UI applications

In addition, TimeStorm offers several unique features designed to optimize the application developer workflow and productivity:

• Provides an intuitive and easy-to-use workflow — from coding to debugging and launch — that enables developers to complete their development without ever having to leave the IDE environment
• Includes many tested and integrated board support packages for popular applications / processors so developers, can start writing applications on day one — literally
• Minimizes errors with the Factory Advice Engine which performs package analysis and suggests a corrective action
• Simplifies application updates and maintenance with the automated ‘Update Engine’ which provides controlled updates only for packages used in your application
• Provides support for command-line by enabling ready-made automated scripts for automated build systems and integrating with existing projects that have command-line driven scripts
• Features ‘SmartSearch’ intelligence which enables developers to search for packages based on their function — no need to know the package name
• Includes working demo and code fragments which developers are free to use