Required software

OpenEmbedded's Software Requirements

This page is the reference of what software is needed. But OEandYourDistro is likely much faster in getting you that software actually installed.

To use the OE build system the following software is required on your system:

• Python (Version 2.4.0 or later)
  • Note that you may also need certain development files for Python e.g. for bitbake's setup.py to work. Depending on the distribution you use you may want to look for a package called "python-dev", "python-devel", or similar.
• GNU Patch (Version 2.5.9 or later, see ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/ . It is a "testing release" and is not mirrored on the GNU mirrors.)
• GNU m4
• GNU make (Version 3.80 or later for hh.org kernels)
• Psyco JIT Compiler is recommended to increase performance
• ccache
• perl (needs newer than 5.0, how much newer? probably at least 5.6.2)
• diffstat
• bitbake

Tools to download source files

• wget
• curl
• ftp
• cvs
• subversion
• git

Tools to verify integrity of the downloaded sources

• md5sum
• sha256sum

Tools to unpack sources

• tar
• bzip2
• gzip
• unzip

Tools to build the various *-doc packages

• Jade or OpenJade
  • I don't know which of these is preferred
• Docbook DTDs and DSSSL stylesheets
• sgmltools, called "sgmltools-lite" too
• docbook-utils
  • docbook-utils download is hard to find; look in ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/docbook-tools/new-trials/SOURCES
• Texinfo
• texi2html (Perl script that converts Texinfo to HTML)

Other packages

• GNU sed 4.x
• Bison
• bc (binary calculator), if you want to build a Zaurus 2.4 or any of the collie kernels
• glibc headers (libc6-dev in Debian, glibc-devel in RPM based (in PLD also glibc-static is needed))
• pcre headers (Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library, required for e.g. konqueror-embedded)
• SDL headers to build qemu-native (apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev under Ubuntu/Debian)
• mktemp (required by quilt and used in some package patches)
• help2man - Create simple man pages from --help output

There is an ongoing effort to accurately document the required software within the OpenEmbedded and ultimately, this will be reflected in the ASSUME_PROVIDED variable.