Debian is Worth a Lot (Yet it’s Free) and C/C++ Language Still Rules

James E. Bromberger (JEB) , a contributor to Perl CPAN and Debian, has estimated the cost of developing Debian Wheezy (7.0) from scratch based on the the number of lines of code (LOC) counted with SLOCCount tool, the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) and the average wage of a developer of 72,533 USD (using median estimates from Salary.com and PayScale.com for 2011). He found 419,776,604 lines of code in 31 programming languages giving an estimated cost of producing Debian Wheezy in February 2012 of 19 billion US dollar (14.4 Billion Euros), making each package source code (out of the 17,141 packages) worth an average of 1,112,547.56 USD to produce. He also estimated the cost of Linux 3.1.8 Kernel with almost 10 millions lines of source code would be worth 540 million USD at standard complexity, or 1.877 billions USD when rated as ‘complex’. I don’t know which tool he used for […]

Embedded World Conference 2012 Schedule

The Embedded World Conference 2012 will taken place on the February 28 – March 1 in Nuremberg, Germany. There will be over 1,000 exhibitors for the tenth conference (it started in 2003) showcasing their new products and solutions for the embedded markets. Beyond the exhibition, there will also be 13 classes and 22 sessions during those 3 days. February 28th 2012 Classes: 09:30 – 15:30 – Modeling Behavior with UML: Interactions and Statecharts by Dr. Bruce Douglass, IBM 16:00 – 17:00 – Agile Systems Engineering by Dr. Bruce Douglass, IBM 09:30 – 18:00 – Introduction to Real-Time Operating Systems by Dr. David Kalinsky, D. Kalinsky Associates 09:30 – 18:00 – Hands-on-Workshop Safety Critical Linux – Automated debugging and code screening with formal methods by Prof. Nicholas Mc Guire, OSADL Safety Critical Linux Working Group and Andreas Platschek, OpenTech. 09:30 – 16:30 – Cryptography and embedded Security – The Workshop chaired […]

Yocto Project Quick Start Guide for Ubuntu

Yocto is an embedded Linux build system used to create a Linux distribution for a specific application/board combination. I’ll describe 2 methods to get started: Building and running  a qemu image for x86 from scratch Using pre-built binaries to run the x86 image in qemu This is a shorter version of the longish Yocto Project’s Quick Start Guide. The official guide is more complete (explains all details) and give instructions for several distributions, whereas this guide simply lists each step and is focused on Ubuntu. So you could use this guide to start the build, and during the build (which will last a while), read the official guide to actually understand how it all works.   Prerequisites First, you need to use bash instead of dash in Ubuntu:

and select “No” to use bash. Then install the required packages with apt-get:

Building and running a qemu image for […]

Debugging Embedded Linux with GDBserver and Insight (gdb GUI)

Although it it sometimes possible to debug applications using GDB (The GNU Debugger) on the target boards, there is often not enough memory available to run GDB on embedded systems running Linux. To work around this issue, you can use gdbserver to perform remote debugging. Installing and running gdbserver on the target board First of all you need to install gdbserver on the target board. Assuming you use a Debian based distribution:

If you distribution, does not have binary repository, you can download gdb source code and cross-compile gdbserver. Once gdbserver is installed, (cross-)compile your application in debug mode and start gdbserver as follows:

Where target_ip and target_port are respectively the IP address of the board and the chosen TCP port, and prog_dbg, the program under test compile in debug mode (CFLAGS=-g). Remote Debugging with GDB If you are familiar with gdb and prefer to use the command […]

Android Developers Conference 2012 (AnDevCon III) Schedule

The full schedule for AnDevCon III (14-17 May 2012)  has finally been released with 42 different classes and several workshops. The sessions will be organized into five subject area: Developer Essentials: These technical classes and workshops are for all Android developers and cover all programming topics. Android Enterprise: These technical sessions cover topics specific to building and managing apps for employees, business customers and partners, such as back-end integration corporate data center communications, ERP or CRM systems. Android Business: These classes and workshops are for entrepreneurial developers who want to learn the most effective ways of distributing and selling Android apps, including how to maximize profit through the Android Market. Android Tablets and beyond: These classes and workshops are specific to commercial devices beyond smartphones, including tablets, Google TV, and other platforms. Embedded Android: These classes and workshops are for developers working close to the hardware, such as on custom […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2012 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2012) will take place on February 15 – 15, 2012 at Hotel Sofitel in San Francisco. ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting. February 15 10:30 – 11: 30 – Profiling and Performance Measurement Techniques Using Linux Kernel Tools by Govindraj Raja, Software Engineer at Texas Instruments and Partha S Basak, Technical Manager at Texas Instruments. With ever growing features and functionality of Linux kernel, one needs methods to trace and profile parts of Linux kernel for various reasons like performance analysis, debugging etc. This presentation aims at providing an insight into few of these tools and their salient features. Supporting use case data as captured on open source OMAP4 pandaboard is also provided. 14:00 – 15:00 – The Yocto Project Overview […]

Wind River Unveils Android User Experience, Connectivity and Medical Modules.

Wind River has introduced Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, a series of software modules to help developers jumpstart their Android development and rapidly integrate compelling features and functionalities to their devices. Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android are currently available in three software modules: User Experience: Accelerated boot time technologies including Hyper boot enabling devices to resume from RAM in less than 1 second and from Flash in 8 seconds. This technology can speed up the Android boot time by 30%. It is hardware agnostic and can run on different hardware platforms with little or no customization effort. Multi-windowing screen navigation aimed at devices with larger screens such as tablets, automotive infotainment systems, media phones, and industrial devices. The application windows are sized based on the remaining portion of the visible screen and users can minimize, resize, and arrange them as they wish. (See Picture on top) Media Center […]

Adding a Project to Gitorious with a Windows Computer

If you are developing software in Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, here are the steps to follow to push your project to Gitorious. Register and create a new project on Gitorious, if you haven’t done already. Install msysGit to have git on your Windows machine Click on “Git Bash” to start the command line Generate the SSH Key with “ssh-keygen -t rsa” and  press ‘Return’ in every question. Go to your Gitorious dashboard, click on “Manage SSH Keys” then “Add SSH Key“, copy the content of “cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub” in Gitorious and click save Then go to your local project directory and follow the “getting started instructions” given in Gitorious, which should look like: git config –global user.name “Your Name” git config –global user.email “[email protected]” git checkout master git remote add origin [email protected]:your-project/your-project.git git push origin master Then wait until the code is pushed to the Gitorious server. If […]

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