Overview

The dboard BSP tool is a command-line tool, currently available for Linux and OSX systems, that greatly simplifies developing and configuring your DevelBoard EVA01 and other DevelBoard-based boards.

The goal of the tool is to let you focus on development of your application based on DevelBoard, and not having to struggle with complex configurations related to managing a Linux embedded board.

The tool currently allows to perform tasks such as:

  • Download and upgrade the latest kernel and rootfs images
  • Discover and connect to DevelBoards connected with USB, Ethernet and Wi-Fi, with either a serial or SSH shell
  • Handle a local overlay containing your own modifications, correctly versioned with git
  • Installing additional packages
  • Create self-booting SD cards
  • Configure the network subsytem
  • Run the board via NFS, using the local overlay
  • Measure the boot time for tuning

All these tasks can be performed by simply using the tool, without having to do complex modifications to the bootloader, the filesystem, installing and configuring local packages, using virtual machines, following lengthy tutorials, and so on.

It also offers a standard structure to correctly maintain a customised board filesystem in a git repository, to benefit from standard source control management techniques, and offering full reproducibility of the build process.

Installation

dboard is distributed as a self-contained binary file, with no installation required. We will be offering .deb and .rpm files later.

After download, remember to mark the file as executable and copy it into a directory within your PATH, such as /usr/local/bin:

$ chmod +x dboard
$ sudo mv dboard /usr/local/bin

Updates

dboard transparently checks for updates once a day (while you are using it) and updates itself if it finds a new version.

You should always be running the latest version of dboard, as previous versions are unsupported. This does not mean that you are required to update the whole BSP (your kernel images or filesystem), but only the latest version of this tool.

You can check which version you are running with dboard version and force a manual update with dboard update.