alt Hacker NewsI’ve been experimenting with what a next-generation embedded Linux build system might look like: native builds on the target architecture, modern language package managers as first-class citizens, and AI as a primary interface to the system.
Instead of cross-compiling with a large meta-layer stack, the tool builds kernel, rootfs, and applications together using one engine, with a CLI, TUI, and AI assistant talking to the same core. All you need is the tool, Docker, and Git — no global SDKs or hidden state.
It’s pre-1.0 and rough around the edges; I’m sharing it early to get feedback from people who live in Yocto/OpenEmbedded, Buildroot, Nix, etc. I’d love to hear where this breaks on your boards, what workflows feel wrong, and whether the “native builds + AI-aware build graph” direction seems promising.
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Armbian and Qemu worked well for me when I needed to compile packages for an orange pi without enough RAM to actually run cargo build. Built the image on an emulator with more RAM then the target system, dropped the customized image on the SD card and booted right into the entry script.
I wish you luck! The pain points you identified are definitely real and solving them would be valuable.
The workflow for user space can definitely improve some of this pain but I feel like a large portion of any embedded Linux development effort still ends up in the weeds for boot related items (secure boot, proper updates, nuanced kernel patches, bootloaders, device trees, and supporting machine variants, etc). Solving those to make them easy is a hard problem for sure.
Native builds on target can be very slow?
>native builds
This is the complete opposite way, actually.
We need cross-compiling that is just as effortless as native compilation.
You should be able to build complex software on a powerful computer and perform costly optimization, then run it on a low-powered device.