What makes a good Yocto BSP?

As we evaluate technology to use in our platforms, Yocto Embedded Linux BSPs often come into the mix.

Recently we talked with Matt Madison, who maintains the meta-tegra BSP layer, which provides Yocto support for Nvidia's embedded processors, which are increasingly becoming popular in edge AI applications.

We are using meta-tegra in several projects, and it has been a good experience.

What came out of our discussion is that user/community involvement is what makes a good BSP.

meta-freescale and meta-raspberrypi are other examples of community-oriented BSP layers that are very high quality.

Chip makers have different priorities and concerns than users. And the only way to understand your users is to get them involved. And the best way to get them involved is to work on an OSS project together.

We've run the experiment in the Yocto BSP space for 14 years, and the results are in.

When evaluating a complex technology like processors that rely on open-source, if a supplier does include their users in the development process, there is a good chance they don't really understand your concerns.