Buildroot:DeveloperDaysFOSDEM2013

What is Buildroot ?
Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that makes it easy to generate a complete embedded Linux system. Buildroot can generate any or all of a cross-compilation toolchain, a root filesystem, a kernel image and a bootloader image. Buildroot is useful mainly for people working with small or embedded systems, using various CPU architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc.) : it automates the building process of your embedded system and eases the cross-compilation process.

Thanks to our sponsor Google
We would like to thank Google, who will be providing the meeting location, with Internet connection, but also free lunch and refreshments for the meeting participants. Thanks Google!

It is worth noting that Google is sponsoring due to their usage of Buildroot to build embedded Linux systems for embedded devices used in the Google Fiber project. The source code of their modified Buildroot is available at.

Location and date
The Buildroot community is organizing a meeting on Monday February 4th 2013 and Tuesday Feburary 5th 2013, for Buildroot developers and contributors. This meeting will be a mixture of discussion and hacking session around the Buildroot project. This meeting takes place right after the FOSDEM, in order to make it easy for participants to attend both events.

Note that it is not mandatory to attend both days. It is expected that the first day will be mostly dedicated to discussion, while the second day will be mostly dedicated to hacking.

The meeting will take place in Google Brussels offices, located Chaussée d'Etterbeek 180, 1040 Brussels. See http://goo.gl/maps/ZVAGJ for a map of the area.

Participants

 * 1) Thomas Petazzoni, confirmed. Arriving on February, 1st at 19:45 at BRU airport, leaving on February, 5th at 21:10 from BRU airport.
 * 2) Yann E. MORIN, confirmed. Arriving 2013-02-01 17:23 at Bruxelles Midi, leaving on 2013-02-05 17:13 from Bruxelles Midi.
 * 3) Peter Korsgaard, confirmed. Lives close by.
 * 4) Arnout Vandecappelle, confirmed. Lives even closer by.
 * 5) Samuel Martin, confirmed. Arriving on February, 2nd at 08:47 at Bruxelles Midi, leaving on February, 5th at 19:13 from Bruxelles Midi.
 * 6) Dimitrios Siganos, attending on Monday only.
 * 7) Thomas De Schampheleire, confirmed. Lives close by.

Registration
Please contact Thomas Petazzoni (thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com) if you would like to attend.

Attending the event is free, but registration is required.

Note that the event is mainly intended for Buildroot developers and contributors, or advanced users willing to contribute more or to share about their use case for Buildroot.

List of topics to discuss
Good starting points are:
 * Report of the ELCE 2012 Buildroot meeting
 * ELCE 2012 List of topics

Topics for the discussion day (Monday 2013-02-04)

 * Topics related to changes to the infrastructures
 * current state of the infrastructure, and how to enhance it
 * copy target/ before creating images
 * handling of linux-menuconfig, busybox-menuconfig, uclibc-menuconfig, etc.
 * Refactoring package menus (Arnout)
 * Support for out-of-tree packages (Arnout)
 * pending series enhancing the infrastructure
 * post-image-script
 * _CONFIG_FIXUP
 * build out-of-package-dir
 * package-create-user
 * pkg-infra: limit -reconfigure and -rebuild actions
 * Topics related to the packages included in Buildroot
 * finally remove the 'devel-on-target' packages ?
 * new packages pending
 * tzdata et al.
 * What to do with systemd/udev/eudev
 * How are we doing? (Arnout)
 * Is the project sufficiently stable?
 * Do we have enough users, contributors?
 * Are there threats we should care about?
 * Building a fully configured project
 * Wild idea: scratchbox2
 * Building a fully configured project
 * Wild idea: scratchbox2

Topics for the hackaton day (Tuesday 2013-02-05)

 * help triage the pending patches
 * Create scripts to help the triaging process
 * More people with patchwork write access?
 * design (and implement) changes discused the previous day (eg. infrastructure enhancements)
 * test and upstream changes discused the previous day (pending infrastructure changes and packages)
 * update the crosstool-NG backend
 * Fix iso9660 fs
 * Document the Buildroot policy decisions (about out-of-tre packages, about package manager support, about cleaning, ...) (Arnout)
 * Document use cases (as discussed yesterday)

Report
http://lite.framapad.org/p/buildrootdeveloperday2013