RidgeRun vs Yocto
RidgeRun has many years of experience in embedded Linux development. Our products are simply an out-growth of the tools we desired to have before we created them. Our R&D mission is to speed our customer's product development by making Embedded Linux development leveraging Open Source technologies easier to use. The value of your development environment can be measured by the time it takes from make a source code change until you are able to test the change. The longer change/build/load/test cycle, the more your development environment is costing you in lost engineering productivity.
Ridgerun has supported several Open Embedded / Yocto / bit bake build systems for audio video streaming SoCs. These systems are wonderful in that they provide a board specific SoC support as well as open a wider range of Linux open source software packages which can be built into an embedded platform. RidgeRun has supported several product development efforts based on these technologies and we are striving to bring our customers the best these tools have to offer as well as correcting several of the historic issues we have seen with these implementations.
We base our R&D development, and our SDK technology, on the key features that our engineering team and our customers consider mandatory to speed up the development process such as:
- Download time: With less than 100MB the RidgeRun SDK can be quickly downloaded. In the build process the SDK takes care of which packages are needed and once downloaded onto your computer any further build won't require the package to be downloaded again. You can have hundreds of SDKs on your system with a minimum of space.
- Setup time: We know how important is for a developer to configure his system quickly and easily; that's why RidgeRun's SDK integrates all the setup on a single configuration window where you can select which applications to build, which deployment mode to use (UBIFS, NFS, SD card), and so on. Just type make config, configure your system and type make to get it ready with the new setup.
- Build time: One of the steps that takes the most time in development is the build time. Having to wait up to 2 hours to get a build system ready to deploy slows down the development and testing process. With a 30 minute build time for the first time and 2 minute time for further rebuilds, the RidgeRun SDK reduces development time allowing the engineer to get a new system ready in some minutes.
- Package addition complexity: RidgeRun is always improving the SDK's packages availability based on our customers' requirements. The RidgeRun SDK now includes Yocto integration making it straight forward to add any required package to the SDK and get it built as soon as possible. The SDK build system allows package integration to be fast and reliable by removing the cross-compilation fight.
| Tool Feature | RidgeRun SDK | Yocto / OE / Bitbake | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease to set up and use | Type make config | Execute . ./oe-init-build-env, search packages in Yocto recipes, add IMAGE_INSTALL_append = "package" | RidgeRun has a simplified configuration tool which takes the complexity out of board and file system setup. Configuring for NFS, NAND or SD card deployment is as easy as selecting the desired mode and rebuilding the SDK. |
| Build time (1st run) |
Typically builds in ~30 minutes | Typically builds in about ~1.5 hours | Ridgerun SDK will download and build only the required packages, after they have been downloaded, any further SDK build won't need to download them again. |
| Build time (after configuration or code change) |
Typical build times about ~2 minutes | Typical build times about ~8 minutes | Ridgerun SDK takes care of what packages need to be rebuilt so it does not require rebuilding the entire project each time. |
| Build error resolution | Build error generally report issues with missing packages, compile errors etc. | Builds can end without reporting any problems leading to tedious hunting down of issues | RidgeRun's SDK is focused on the board and SoC used by the customer, making the directory structure much easier to understand. Yocto uses a layout making it easier to support multiple boards and multiple SoCs, making finding what interests you more difficult. |
| File system clarity | All files, libraries required by the system located in one place /fs/fs | Separate file system directories with hidden files and folders for each package | |
| Availability of open source programs | RidgeRun has a Yocto package integration feature simplifying adding open source programs which have Yocto recipes to your system | A package manager based build system trying to open the widest possible set of open source programs. |
If you are developing many products, using many SoCs and many boards, then Yocto has clear advantages over RidgeRun. If you have one or a couple of products based on similar SoCs, then the learning curve to become effective with the RidgeRun SDK is much easier.
RidgeRun Youtube Video demo on Why choose the RidgeRun SDK over Yocto based solutions?
- Embed version (below)
