Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 9, 2025 15:09 UTC (Tue) by Arrange1030 (subscriber, #178702)
Parent article: Introducing Space Grade Linux

Are there any recent projects that are in the same niche as Yocto?

Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 9, 2025 16:27 UTC (Tue) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link]

Buildroot has been used for a lot of Linux-based space missions. When I talked to people doing Linux-based cubesats at the SmallSat conference a few years ago, many of them had not heard of Yocto. A lot of projects get their kernel and distro from a satellite bus supplier (which usually includes the flight computer), and don't build the kernel themselves. In my experience, fiddling with details of the OS is a low priority task, relative to the custom development that is done for whatever payload the mission is carrying.

Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 9, 2025 22:41 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (2 responses)

NixOS is somewhat in the same niche. It's harder to learn (it involved learning a special purpose functional language), but it's very rewarding. Reproducing builds are very valuable. Even more so in the environment where radiation can cause bit flips.

Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 10, 2025 0:34 UTC (Wed) by Arrange1030 (subscriber, #178702) [Link]

I'm already using Nix, and a minimal system config weighs in at almost 4GB. I guess I can try not-os next.

Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 12, 2025 22:52 UTC (Fri) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link]

> Reproducing builds are very valuable. Even more so in the environment where radiation can cause bit flips.

Surely at this point we're talking about systems that will be built on Earth and merely *deployed* to space -- there's no radiation in the build environment.

Reproducible builds are great when delivering packages to distrusting downstream users. It wouldn't hurt but it matters less if the same organization is responsible for both build infra and deployment.

Is there nothing better than Yocto?

Posted Sep 16, 2025 15:08 UTC (Tue) by sam.thursfield (subscriber, #94496) [Link]

BuildStream is an attempt to design a build tool that is more robust than BitBake. And Freedesktop SDK works as a corresponding "reference distribution." At this stage, BuildStream is being used in production in some places, but has only a small community and very minimal investment. You'll find it interesting as a way to explore software integration with a different set of core concepts to BitBake.