Open Source Summit Europe 2022

Many people are familiar with the 5 W's: Who, What, Where, When, Why (and how) ? What they may not be as familiar with, is how they are answered in the context of containers in an embedded system. In fact, some may assume that the collective answer to these questions leads away from the embedded Linux and the Yocto project if containerization is required. In recent years, requests for containers and deeper integration with wider CNCF frameworks has become more common for edge and embedded systems. This typically leads to solutions involving cut-down enterprise Linux, or flavours of existing small footprint Linux. While these solutions are functional, they don't always fully address issues like licensing, reproducibility, security and maintenance. The Yocto project has a long history with requirements such as these, but lacks visibility in meeting the requirements of containerization. This presentation will discuss how containers and the Yocto project can be used as a deployment component in a modern embedded system. The 5 W's will be answered, and it will show how packages, containers and other outputs of the project can be used as general purpose building blocks. It will finish with an example build, deploy and update cycle for a micro-service/small foot print container.