Embedded developers and kernel hackers: can they work together?

Embedded systems are getting a lot out of Linux. What has to happen to get patches back to the core kernel?

By Jake Edge, LinuxWorld.com, 04/29/08

 Start a discussion    Print article

 Comments (1)    Print article

In many ways, Andrew Morton's keynote set the tone for this year's Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) by describing the ways that embedded companies and developers can work with the kernel community in a way that will be "mutually beneficial". Morton provided reasons, from a purely economic standpoint, why it makes sense for companies to get their code into the mainline kernel. He also provided concrete suggestions on how to make that happen. The theme of the conference seemed to be "working with the community" and Morton's speech provided an excellent example of how and why to do just that.

Conference organizer Tim Bird introduced the keynote as "the main event" for ELC, noting that he often thought of Morton as "kind of like the adult in the room" on linux-kernel. Readers of that mailing list tend to get the impression that there's more than one of him around because of all that he does. He also noted that it was surprising to some that Morton has an embedded Linux background—from his work at Digeo.

Morton believes that embedded development is underrepresented in kernel.org work relative to its economic importance. This is caused by a number of factors, not least the financial constraints under which much embedded development is done. An exceptional case is the chip and board manufacturers who have a big interest in seeing Linux run well on their hardware so that they can attract more customers. But even those do not contribute as much as he would like to see to kernel development.

An effect of this underrepresentation is a risk that it will tilt kernel development more toward the server and desktop. The kernel team is already accused of being server-centric, and there is some truth to that, "but not as much as one might think". Kernel hackers do care about the desktop as well as embedded devices, but without an advocate for embedded concerns, sometimes things get missed.

Something Morton would like to see is a single full-time "embedded maintainer". That person would serve as the advocate for embedded concerns, ensuring that they didn't get overlooked in the process. An embedded maintainer could make a significant impact for embedded development.

Invalid query - session: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

About Us | Contact Us | Advertising Info | Terms of Service/Privacy

Copyright, 2006-2007 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.