6 Buildroot has a nice configuration tool similar to the one you can
7 find in the http://www.kernel.org/[Linux kernel] or in
8 http://www.busybox.net/[Busybox]. Note that you can *and should build
9 everything as a normal user*. There is no need to be root to configure
10 and use Buildroot. The first step is to run the configuration
17 to run the curses-based configurator, or
29 to run the Qt or GTK-based configurators.
31 All of these "make" commands will need to build a configuration
32 utility (including the interface), so you may need to install
33 "development" packages for relevant libraries used by the
34 configuration utilities. Check xref:requirement[] to know what
35 Buildroot needs, and specifically the xref:requirement-optional[optional requirements]
36 to get the dependencies of your favorite interface.
38 For each menu entry in the configuration tool, you can find associated
39 help that describes the purpose of the entry.
41 Once everything is configured, the configuration tool generates a
42 +.config+ file that contains the description of your
43 configuration. It will be used by the Makefiles to do what's needed.
51 You *should never* use +make -jN+ with Buildroot: it does not support
52 'top-level parallel make'. Instead, use the +BR2_JLEVEL+ option to
53 tell Buildroot to run each package compilation with +make -jN+.
55 The `make` command will generally perform the following steps:
57 * download source files (as required);
58 * configure, build and install the cross-compiling toolchain using the
59 appropriate toolchain backend, or simply import an external toolchain;
60 * build/install selected target packages;
61 * build a kernel image, if selected;
62 * build a bootloader image, if selected;
63 * create a root filesystem in selected formats.
65 Buildroot output is stored in a single directory, +output/+.
66 This directory contains several subdirectories:
68 * +images/+ where all the images (kernel image, bootloader and root
69 filesystem images) are stored.
71 * +build/+ where all the components except for the cross-compilation
72 toolchain are built (this includes tools needed to run Buildroot on
73 the host and packages compiled for the target). The +build/+
74 directory contains one subdirectory for each of these components.
76 * +staging/+ which contains a hierarchy similar to a root filesystem
77 hierarchy. This directory contains the installation of the
78 cross-compilation toolchain and all the userspace packages selected
79 for the target. However, this directory is 'not' intended to be
80 the root filesystem for the target: it contains a lot of development
81 files, unstripped binaries and libraries that make it far too big
82 for an embedded system. These development files are used to compile
83 libraries and applications for the target that depend on other
86 * +target/+ which contains 'almost' the complete root filesystem for
87 the target: everything needed is present except the device files in
88 +/dev/+ (Buildroot can't create them because Buildroot doesn't run
89 as root and doesn't want to run as root). Also, it doesn't have the correct
90 permissions (e.g. setuid for the busybox binary). Therefore, this directory
91 *should not be used on your target*. Instead, you should use one of
92 the images built in the +images/+ directory. If you need an
93 extracted image of the root filesystem for booting over NFS, then
94 use the tarball image generated in +images/+ and extract it as
95 root. Compared to +staging/+, +target/+ contains only the files and
96 libraries needed to run the selected target applications: the
97 development files (headers, etc.) are not present, the binaries are
100 * +host/+ contains the installation of tools compiled for the host
101 that are needed for the proper execution of Buildroot, including the
102 cross-compilation toolchain.
104 * +toolchain/+ contains the build directories for the various
105 components of the cross-compilation toolchain.
107 These commands, +make menuconfig|gconfig|xconfig+ and +make+, are the
108 basic ones that allow to easily and quickly generate images fitting
109 your needs, with all the supports and applications you enabled.
111 More details about the "make" command usage are given in