Chapter 1
About Buildroot
Buildroot is a tool that simplifies and automates the process of building a complete Linux system for an embedded system, using cross-compilation.
In order to achieve this, Buildroot is able to generate a cross-compilation toolchain, a root filesystem, a Linux kernel image and a bootloader for your target. Buildroot can be used for any combination of these options, independently (you can for example use an existing cross-compilation toolchain, and build only your root filesystem with Buildroot).
Buildroot is useful mainly for people working with embedded systems. Embedded systems often use processors that are not the regular x86 processors everyone is used to having in his PC. They can be PowerPC processors, MIPS processors, ARM processors, etc.
Buildroot supports numerous processors and their variants; it also 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 or SDK  on top of Buildroot.

 第一章

关于Buildroot

Buildroot是一个简单化和可以自动生成一个完整linux嵌入式系统和交叉编译工具链的工具。

为了实现这个功能，Buildroot 可以为你的目标生成一个交叉编译工具链，一个根文件系统，一个Linux内核镜像和一个bootloader镜像。Buildroot可以用来生成以上的几个文件的任意组合或者单独生成某一个文件（例如，你用现成的交叉编译工具链和Buildroot一起生成你所需的根文件系统）。

Buildroot对于那些从事嵌入式系统的人来说是很有用的。嵌入式系统经常使用的处理器并不是普通电脑经常用的x86处理器。这些处理器可能是PowerPC,MIPS,ARM等处理器。

BUildroot支持众多处理器及其系列，它也配备了几个现成板卡的默认配置。除此之外，在支持一些第三方工程项目上，可以开发顶层支持Buildroot的BSP包或SDK包。

Chapter 2
Starting up
2.1 System requirements
Buildroot is designed to run on Linux systems.
Buildroot needs some software to be already installed on the host system; here are the lists of the mandatory and optional packages (package names may vary between distributions).
Take care to install both runtime and development data, especially for the libraries that may be packaged in 2 distinct packages.

第二章

启动

2.1 系统要求

Buildroot 设计成要在Linux系统上运行。

Buildroot需要一些软件已经安装在主机系统上，以下是必备和可选的安装包（包的名字在各个发布版本可能会有所不同）。

在安装运行和添加数据库要注意到，库文件可能被打包在两个类别的包里。

2.1.1 Mandatory packages

2.1.1必备的安装包
• Build tools:
– which
– sed
– make (version 3.81 or any later)
– binutils
– build-essential (only for Debian based systems)
– gcc (version 2.95 or any later)
– g++ (version 2.95 or any later)
– bash
– patch
– gzip
– bzip2
– perl
– tar
– cpio
– python (version 2.6 or 2.7)
– unzip
– rsync
• Source fetching tools:

– wget

2.1.2 Optional packages

• Source fetching tools:
In the official tree, most of the package sources are retrieved using wget; a few are only available through their git, mercurial, or svn repository.
All other source fetching methods are implemented and may be used in a development context (further details: refer to Section 6.4).

2.1.2可选的安装包

• 源文件获取工具

在关系树中，大部分的包源文件用wget检索，少数只能通过他们的git，mercurial或svn库获取。

所有其他源文件获取取方法可以实现并可用于开发环境（具体参考Section 6.4）.

– bazaar
– cvs
– git
– mercurial
– rsync
– scp
– subversion
• Configuration interface dependencies (requires development libraries):

• 配置界面依赖（需要开发库）
– ncurses5 to use the menuconfig interface
– qt4 to use the xconfig interface
– glib2, gtk2 and glade2 to use the gconfig interface
• Java-related packages, if the Java Classpath needs to be built for the target system:

•  与Java相关的程序包，如果目标系统需要建立Java Classpath：
– The javac compiler
– The jar tool
• Documentation generation tools:

• 文档生成工具
– asciidoc

 

2.2 Getting Buildroot
Buildroot releases are made approximately every 3 months. Direct Git access and daily snapshots are also available, if you want more bleeding edge.
Releases are available at http://buildroot.net/downloads/.
The latest snapshot is always available at http://buildroot.net/downloads/snapshots/buildroot-snapshot.tar.bz2, and previous snapshots are also available athttp://buildroot.net/downloads/snapshots/.
To download Buildroot using Git, you can simply follow the rules described on the "Accessing Git" page(http://buildroot.net/-git.html) of the Buildroot website(http://buildroot.net). For the impatient, here’s a quick recipe:
  $ git clone git://git.buildroot.net/buildroot

2.2获取Buildroot

buildroot大约每3个月发布一次。如果你想获得最新的产品，Direct Git访问和每天最新的镜像文件的可以提供给你下载
发布版本可在http://buildroot.net/downloads/ 下载。
最新的镜像文件一直放置在 http://buildroot.net/downloads/snapshots/buildroot-snapshot.tar.bz2  ，之前的镜像文件也放置在http://buildroot.net/downloads/snapshots/ 

为了下载Buildroot要使用Git，你可以遵循在buildroot的网站（http://buildroot.net）里的“Accessing Git的”页面（http://buildroot.net/-git.html） 里描述的规则。如果感到麻烦，这里有一个快速的方法：

$ git clone git://git.buildroot.net/buildroot

 

2.3 Using Buildroot
Buildroot has a nice configuration tool similar to the one you can find in the Linux kernel or in Busybox. Note that you can and should build everything as a normal user. There is no need to be root to configure and use Buildroot. The first step is to run the configuration assistant:
$ make menuconfig

2.3 使用Buildroot

Buildroot有一个较好的配置工具，就像你在配置Linux内核或者使用Busybox制作文件系统的配置界面工具。注意的是你只需作为一个普通用户，就可以在Buildroot构造任何东西。这里不需要你是一个超级用户来配置和使用Buildroot，第一步是运行配置助手：

$ make menuconfig