
Joseph Sibony
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If you’re trying to build a custom Linux distribution for your embedded systems, odds are pretty good you’re using Yocto. It’s one of the most popular frameworks for this, and with good reason. It offers the support and constant maintenance of a vibrant community, is used by some of the biggest names in tech, and it’s built to be customizable, flexible, and adaptive.
Even so, it isn’t without some speedbumps – one being that it can take quite some time to compile and complete builds. While you get what you need, you also miss out on some iteration frequency, the ability to quickly test, and add dev time to your projects. Even so, you could always be faster, and – we’re proud to officially say this – that’s where Incredibuild comes in!
Introducing Incredibuild support for Yocto
We get asked if we support Yocto and Automotive-Grade Linux (AGL) quite often, and for a long time, the answer was “maybe in the future”. Well, what can we say but, welcome to the future. Incredibuild officially integrates with Yocto and AGL and can help you get even more out of your builds and create even better custom Linux distributions for your embedded systems.
Yocto is excellent, and it can do a lot, so we thought we could add a little bit to make it even faster. So, what exactly does Incredibuild for Yocto give you?
Faster builds and higher iteration frequency
One of the few downsides of using Yocto is that build times – especially for larger projects or those with multiple layers and large C++ codebases – often take quite some time, even accounting for pre-cached compiles and components. Incredibuild’s dev acceleration platform, combining virtualized distributed processing and build cache makes it easier to get the compute power you need to cut down on long builds with heavy compiles.
That means you can test faster, fine-tune your distributions, and create a Linux OS that works exactly how you need it to in your embedded systems. How much time do you save using Incredibuild with your Yocto builds? On average, we cut down an 86-minute build to 49 minutes in our tests. That’s a full 37 minutes saved on each build, which adds up over a day of working on a project. If you run five builds in a day, you just cut three hours of waiting for your dev team. That means they can run a couple more tests, fine-tune the distribution on the go, or even finish work a little earlier and be well-rested for the next day of testing.
Take Yocto to the cloud
Not to jump on the hype bandwagon here, but have you run your dev builds on the cloud? It does really make a difference, and Yocto is no different. You can access compute resources more easily, use as many instances as you need, and gain a lot of flexibility. Usually, that comes with a price, but Incredibuild helps you keep that pretty low as well.
You don’t even have to dive head-first into the cloud. You can burst some of your processes to cloud resources while maintaining your Yocto projects on-prem, and Incredibuild can help you maximize your efforts. With spot instance orchestration, auto-scaling, and our auto-fallback, you can rest assured that you’re getting the most out of your resources without overspending.
Accelerate your builds out of the box
Here are the steps you need to get Incredibuild working for your Yocto builds:
- Install Incredibuild on your agents
That’s it. No long configurations or complicated workarounds to get things set up. One of the biggest benefits you get is acceleration right out of the box. You can get all your devices set up and start accelerating your Yocto builds within minutes with a single script.
Incredibuild also doesn’t have to replace the systems you already have in place (or that Yocto does). Sstate cache, for instance, can be helpful to cut down on time spent waiting on builds. It makes incremental builds and compiles much simpler, and it is critical to update Yocto-based distributions without having to start from scratch. Incredibuild can work along with sstate cache, giving more caching support and adding distribution to make the process even faster.
So, what are you waiting for?
You can start accelerating your Yocto and AGL builds with Incredibuild now. All you need is a license and a computer (or a few), and you’re well on your way to faster builds, more iterations, and better results.
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Shorten your builds
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