Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference + OSPOCon 2021

When discussing an OpenEmbedded derived distribution, it is common to hear things like "I don't want to take the time build from source", "We don't need that level of control and optimization" or "We just need to boot and demo". These type of questions and concerns are valid, but are addressed by the latest advancements in the Yocto project ecosystem. As projects evolve, so do their requirements and use cases.

Questions may become: "How do I rebuild a package?", "How can someone develop applications against my image/distribution?", "How do I go to production and support?" or "How can I deploy updates and new applications?". This means that the flexibility of the build environment becomes important as do the outputs of that environment.

This talk will discuss how although OpenEmbedded was traditionally source based, it can produce a number of binary outputs. Those outputs can be used to create landing points on the ease of use continuum between well known alternatives such as alpine through Debian, as well as provide a path from demo to production to wide scale cloud deployment. It will also include examples of how these binary outputs can be used in traditional package feed/update mechanisms, as well as in new environments such as Dockerfile builds or cloud-native base images.