[Buildroot] [PATCH 6/9] manual: introduction.txt: enhance Buildroot presentation

Samuel Martin s.martin49 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 5 19:49:11 UTC 2013


* add a "What is Buildroot and what it is not" section
* add a "Buildroot's principles" section

Signed-off-by: Samuel Martin <s.martin49 at gmail.com>
---
 docs/manual/introduction.txt | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/manual/introduction.txt b/docs/manual/introduction.txt
index c014565..0838c48 100644
--- a/docs/manual/introduction.txt
+++ b/docs/manual/introduction.txt
@@ -25,3 +25,43 @@ comes with default configurations for several boards available
 off-the-shelf. Besides this, a number of third-party projects are based on,
 or develop their BSP footnote:[BSP: Board Support Package] or
 SDK footnote:[SDK: Software Development Kit] on top of Buildroot.
+
+What is Buildroot and what it is not
+------------------------------------
+
+Buildroot is:
+
+* a community-driven project
+* a tool uses in the industry
+* Buildroot targets embedded, rather small, often headless, devices
+
+
+Buildroot is *not*:
+
+* a _classic Linux-based distribution_, this means:
+
+** Buildroot root-filesystems are not managed by any package manager,
+   this means there is no way to update only one package of a root-filesystem
+   built by Buildroot without regenerating the whole root-filesystem;
+** Buildroot does not keep track of each package's content;
+** Buildroot does not provide as many packages as others distributions do;
+   so, some packages may be not available yet because the community does not
+   need them or think they are not suitable for embedded targets.
+
+* Root filesystem generated by Buildroot are not intend to be used for
+  native development; so they do not contain any development file (no header,
+  no static library, no native compiler for the target), nor documentation.
+
+Buildroot's principles
+----------------------
+
+* Easy to use
+* Quick build
+* Small footprint of the generated images footnote:[the smallness of the
+image footprint mostly depends on the target device and its application(s)]
+* Easy to hack
+* Being generic, but allowing customization:
+
+** Provide support for SoC, rather than board specific configuration (though
+Buildroot comes with a set of default configurations for a bunch of boards);
+** Provide default configuration that can be easily overriden.
-- 
1.8.4




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