Welcome to the 28th issue of TMPDIR, a weekly newsletter covering Embedded Linux, IoT systems, and technology in general. Subscribe to future issues at https://tinyletter.com/tmpdir and pass it on to anyone else you think might be interested. Please send any tips or feedback to info@tmpdir.org.

Linux

Yocto kirkstone release is coming along

OpenEmbedded Core has received timely update to support poetry which is another packaging and dependency management system for python modules. Since the upcoming kirkstone release is an LTS, it was a good to get this in along with PEP-517 packaging changes, which has been vastly improved since it landing in OE-Core few weeks ago. Additionally Powerpc32 and powerpc64 builds have been fixed. Double float support is not same when it comes to musl vs glibc so this has also warranted a re-org of site files which now ensures that autoconf caches are accurately feeding the size of long doubles on musl.

QT 5.15.3 in Yocto

meta-qt5 has updated the recipes to recently opensourced 5.15.3-lts-lgpl release

SPDX license naming convention

OpenEmbedded core has now moved to use SPDX naming conventions for LICENSE field in recipes, several layers e.g. meta-openembedded, meta-clang, meta-riscv, meta-qcom to name few have also made the change, this will enable further tooling to consume this data for creating SBOMs (software BOMs) and license manifests. There is a script to help convert the layers, the script can be easily run on top directory of a layer

Tow-Boot - An opinionated u-boot distribution

Having a standard boot environment is priceless and especially when it comes to embedded world where the fragmentation is maximum, this project is trying to standardize boot on SBCs and bridge the gaps and special considerations that each board might have. This could be a great asset in Embedded space to have a standard way to boot the system and load any OS on top of it could become very trivial. There is a good initial list of SBCs already supported most of these are 64bit ARM boards, hoping to see other architectures like RISCV64 there soon.

Some notes on using Yocto dynamic layers

Other

The MacroFab platform now supports KiCad 6 files. MacroFab offers digital manufacturing services including PCB assembly. Their platform can provide a real-time quote -- simply upload your design files.

Quote for the week

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. -- Herbert Simon

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Thanks for reading!

Khem and Cliff