Buildroot integration maintenance

General Discussions
1

Are there any more recents updates?

2

Hi @TomorrowTech,

The Buildroot integration is under community contributed maintenance by @aduskett, see GitHub - mendersoftware/buildroot-mender: Buildroot community board integrations for Mender.

We are not providing official maintenance or development for it, sorry.

Greetz,
Josef

3

Ok,
so what do you suggest as possible solution if i need to add the mender layer to a custom buildroot, which is the best option to choose from?
I already tried Yocto and failed completely.

4

Hi @TomorrowTech,

it really depends a bit. If you want to stick with buildroot, then the best place to start is the repository which I linked, make sure that it works for the example machine, as well as the BSP by your board supplier, make sure that this also works, and then combine the two. Maybe @aduskett or @pamolloy have additional pointers.

However, “using Buildroot because failed to use Yocto” is hardly ever a good strategy. You should choose a build system upon requirements first, like, how does the application stack look like, how is it maintained, how does the product look like, how long will it be maintained, with which strategy… then you’ll usually be down to one or two choices anyways. Plus, using something which the board vendor actively supports is usually a good starting point, because it spares you the effort of creating a BSP first.

So if you could provide a few details, like, which board, which vendor, how do your requirements look like, what kind of experience you have, and eventually which problems or errors you are seeing, then somebody might be able to help.

Up to that, its quite complicated to give good advice.

Greetz,
Josef

5

Hi TheYoctoJester,

thank you for the thoughtful reply and the reference to the repository — much appreciated!

You’re absolutely right: my initial approach was more pragmatic than strategic. I started with Buildroot after running into some early roadblocks with Yocto, but I’m now revisiting the bigger picture to ensure the decision aligns with long-term requirements.

Let me clarify my setup and goals:

• Board: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (ARM64)

• Vendor Support: Currently leveraging official Raspberry Pi BSPs (both for Buildroot and Yocto).

• Requirements:

• Minimal Linux system with a custom kiosk-style UI running full-screen.

• Needs Wi-Fi support, serial communication, and access to a USB modem.

• OTA updates planned (looking at Mender or RAUC).

• Medium-long term maintenance (2–4 years), with moderate updates expected.

• Footprint and boot speed are priorities.

• Experience:

• Solid experience with cross platform development application for Linux, Docker, and CI/CD.

• Still ramping up on Yocto internals (bitbake, layers, BSPs), more familiar with Buildroot’s structure so far.

• Why Buildroot (initially):

• Faster prototyping and familiarity.

• But aware of limitations in terms of package management and long-term maintainability.

I’m now trying to evaluate:

  1. Whether it’s worth going back to Yocto and investing the time to get it properly running.

  2. If Buildroot could realistically meet the OTA, modularity, and update lifecycle expectations I have.

  3. How to best layer or merge the BSP with additional packages and UI stack cleanly.

Open to suggestions or best practices from @aduskett, @pamolloy, or anyone else in the community who’s gone through a similar tradeoff.

Thanks again for the guidance!

Best,

Francesco x TomorrowTech

6

Hi @TomorrowTech,

Thanks for the details, I think I can roughly understand the requirements now. One remaining question would be, how does the “kiosk UI” look like, technically? If you’re thinking - in the worst case - about something web stack based, then this will be by far the biggest driver of footprint and boot time. If you go for something like LVGL, then you will get the biggest wins really quickly.

If the board does not get sold but only used in-house of the company which does manufacture the resulting device, then you can also stick with Raspberry Pi OS, which might be an easy way forward. But when considering licensing requirements, I would strongly advise to not use it in a device which is being placed on the market.

When it comes to choosing a build system, I would guess that you can achieve it with either buildroot or Yocto. The question for me would be, is your experience in buildroot good enough to speed up the full integration there so much that it is a net win over the ramp up that you might have with Yocto, but where you can directly start with an image that brings all requirements.

Practically speaking, we provide an example build configuration for the RPi4 ( meta-mender-community/kas/raspberrypi4-64.yml at scarthgap · mendersoftware/meta-mender-community · GitHub ), which should get you up to a running system instantly, and then add your application.

For composability and long term maintenance, I personally would choose Yocto, and I would definitely expect it to be an easy starter. So if you run into issues in getting started with Mender there, I’d like to hear about them. But its not a clear cut decision, and I hope I could point out some things to consider.

Greetz,
Josef

7

Thank you very much for the precious details, i will look into it to make sure i can get it done correctly. The kiosk app it’s an executable cli and a dart (flutter) native application build for linux arm. What do you think of the tech stack i suggested?

Best
Francesco

8

Hi @TomorrowTech,

Well, I would say that this should work almost out of the box with Yocto. Find some resources here:

Set up the base build first, make sure it can boot and update, then add the Flutter things on top.

Greetz,
Josef