Salt Lake City, UT — (press release excerpt) — Lineo today announced addition of support for the use of Debian GNU/Linux binaries to its Embedix Software Development Kit (SDK). The Debian Binary Import Tool enables developers to quickly integrate hundreds of traditional Linux applications into their embedded products.

The Problem: Linux is the fastest growing embedded operating system on the market! It supports a vast array of microprocessor families that continues to grow. No single Linux Vendor can provide all things for all architectures. This fact often leaves the developer with the daunting task of manually integrating additional software from many open sources or from internally developed work.

The Solution: The Embedix SDK allows developers to import source or binary applications via the Package Editor tool. The SDK Tools Suite now also includes the “Debian Binary Import Tool” (DBIT). DBIT allows the developer to download hundreds of publicly available Debian Gnu/Linux binary applications, and to easily include them on target via Embedix Target Wizard. Unlike Package Editor, DBIT manages dependencies, conflicts, file sizes, and help/descriptive text — automatically!

Current DBIT features include . . .

• Ensures that the package being integrated matches the project's targeted processor family.
  
• Automatically incorporates dependencies and conflicts.
  
• Extracts binary file sizes for inclusion in storage size estimates.
  
• Identifies and removes man pages, info pages, documention, and locale strings from imported packages.
  
• Allows user to graphically modify pre and post install scripts and specific dependency information.
  
• Automatically installs the resulting package at the board or project level.
  
• Creates LPF (Lineo Package Format) files for easy portability between SDK users.

Why Debian Gnu/Linux?

Debian GNU/Linux is a long time innovator in the world of Linux for desktop distributions. One of the key benefits of using Debian GNU/Linux for embedded systems is that the full distribution is natively compiled across multiple architectures, including x86, PPC, ARM, m68k, Sparc, MIPS and more. Debian GNU/Linux utilizes the *.deb package format which includes most of the information necessary to take advantage of Target Wizard's user-friendly features. The Embedix and Debian GNU/Linux combination yields an unrivaled embedded system configuration tool, providing access to a complete Linux distribution, while enabling the user to configure it for specific embedded devices.

Availability

DBIT is immediately available. SDK 2.4 users (evaluation or permanent) may download DBIT here.

 
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