Embedded Linux Development Part 1

Linux Kernel

Linux kernel is the very basic thing which we should have in our hand. Kernel is the one which is doing scheduling, task management, memory management and input output management. When you are getting kernel means you are getting collection of modules which are doing all above mentioned tasks. Now question is what I will get if I am purchasing kernel from market
You will get kernel as a library. Some companies are selling source code of kernel but for that you have to pay more. And royalty is also involved with some proprietary kernels.

But you have to cheer because in case of Linux it is available freely and source code is also open. Actually linux kernel is available in source code only. So if you want to download it to your target platform you have to build it and download to target. You can download linux kernel from following location

http://kernel.org/

below is the screenshots of kernel.org website

Linux Kernel Version Numbering

According to this website at the time of writing this article, kernel release version is 2.6.34.
Let us see what these numbers are, below is the description
First number 2, represent linux version
Second number 6, represent major revision
Third number 34, represent minor revision
If third number is odd, it means that this refer to unstable version and is under development. It means that when we are going to download kernel we should select those version which has even number at third place. For example v2.6.24 is stable release and 2.6.25 is unstable release.

Here in above screen shot you can see other versions like 2.6.35-rc3, this means that 2.6.35 is a stable kernel and is under development and will be next released. And rc-3 represent release candidate -3, so we can say that this is a prerelease version.

Viewing Kernel Source Tree

Although kernel source tree is very big and large collections of files. So if you want to explore something in kernel tree then you can do it without any download. For that there are different kernel source tree browsers,

Linux Cross Reference

http://lxr.linux.no/

Kernel HeadQuarter

http://www.kernelhq.org/

GIT
http://git.kernel.org

GIT is open source distributed version control system, linux kernel is also using same.

Embedded Linux application development is very easy if you have all necessary tools. If you want to use open source tools then this situation is if not easy to find all tools at single platform (if you are not using paid software). In this article I tried to collect information of all tools on a single platform and giving information to you.
Tools used in Embedded Linux development can be categorized into following 4 categories

1.Linux Kernel with support of processor and board
2.Building tools
3.IDE
4.Testing Tool
5.Development Board

PART 1 | PART 2