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<chapter id='intro'>
<title>Introduction</title>

<section id='intro-welcome'>
    <title>Welcome to Poky!</title>

    <para>
        Poky is the the build tool in Yocto Project.
        It is at the heart of Yocto Project.
        You use Poky within Yocto Project to build the images (kernel software) for targeted hardware.
    </para>

    <para>
        Before jumping into Poky you should have an understanding of Yokto Project.
        Be sure you are familiar with the information in the Yocto Project Quick Start.
        You can find this documentation on the public <ulink rul='http://yoctoproject.org/'>Yocto Project Website</ulink>.
    </para>
</section>

<section>
    <title>What is Poky?</title>

    <para>
        Poky provides an open source Linux, X11, Matchbox, GTK+, Pimlico, Clutter, and other <ulink url='http://gnome.org/mobile'>GNOME Mobile</ulink> technologies based full platform build tool within Yocto Project.
        It creates a focused, stable, subset of OpenEmbedded that can be easily and reliably built and developed upon.
        Poky fully supports a wide range of x86 ARM, MIPS and PowerPC hardware and device virtulisation.
    </para>

    <para>
        Poky is primarily a platform builder which generates filesystem images
        based on open source software such as the Kdrive X server, the Matchbox
        window manager, the GTK+ toolkit and the D-Bus message bus system. Images
        for many kinds of devices can be generated, however the standard example
        machines target QEMU full system emulation(x86, ARM, MIPS and PowerPC) and
        real reference boards for each of these architectures.
        Poky's ability to boot inside a QEMU
        emulator makes it particularly suitable as a test platform for development
        of embedded software.
    </para>

    <para>
        An important component integrated within Poky is Sato, a GNOME Mobile 
        based user interface environment.
        It is designed to work well with screens at very high DPI and restricted
        size, such as those often found on smartphones and PDAs. It is coded with
        focus on efficiency and speed so that it works smoothly on hand-held and
        other embedded hardware. It will sit neatly on top of any device
        using the GNOME Mobile stack, providing a well defined user experience.
    </para>

    <screenshot>
    <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
            <imagedata fileref="screenshots/ss-sato.png" format="PNG" align='center' scalefit='1' width="100%" contentdepth="100%"/>
        </imageobject>
        <caption>
            <para>The Sato Desktop - A screenshot from a machine running a Poky built image</para>
        </caption>
     </mediaobject>
     </screenshot>


    <para>

    Poky has a growing open source community and is also backed up by commercial organisations including <ulink url="http://www.intel.com/">Intel Corporation</ulink>.

    </para>
</section>

<section id='intro-manualoverview'>
    <title>Documentation Overview</title>
    <para>
        The Poky User Guide is split into sections covering different aspects of Poky. 
        The <link linkend='usingpoky'>'Using Poky' section</link> gives an overview of the components that make up Poky followed by information about using Poky and debugging images created in Yocto Project. 
        The <link linkend='extendpoky'>'Extending Poky' section</link> gives information about how to extend and customise Poky along with advice on how to manage these changes. 
        The <link linkend='platdev'>'Platform Development with Poky' section</link> gives information about interaction between Poky and target hardware for common platform development tasks such as software development, debugging and profiling. 
        The rest of the manual consists of several reference sections each giving details on a specific section of Poky functionality.
    </para>

    <para>
        This manual applies to Poky Release 3.3 (Green).
    </para>
</section>


<section id='intro-requirements'>
    <title>System Requirements</title>
    <para>
        We recommend Debian-based distributions, in particular a recent Ubuntu 
        release (10.04 or newer), as the host system for Poky. Nothing in Poky is
        distribution specific and other distributions will most likely work as long 
        as the appropriate prerequisites are installed - we know of Poky being used 
        successfully on Redhat, SUSE, Gentoo and Slackware host systems.
        For information on what you need to develop images using Yocto Project and Poky 
        you should see the Yocto Project Quick Start on the public 
        <ulink rul='http://yoctoproject.org/'>Yocto Project Website</ulink>.
    </para>
</section>

<section id='intro-getit'>
    <title>Obtaining Poky</title>

    <section id='intro-getit-releases'>
        <title>Releases</title>

        <para>Periodically, we make releases of Poky and these are available
            at <ulink url='http://pokylinux.org/releases/'/>.
            These are more stable and tested than the nightly development images.</para>
    </section>

    <section id='intro-getit-nightly'>
        <title>Nightly Builds</title>

        <para>
            We make nightly builds of Poky for testing purposes and to make the
            latest developments available. The output from these builds is available
            at <ulink url='http://autobuilder.pokylinux.org/'/>
            where the numbers increase for each subsequent build and can be used to reference it.
        </para>

        <para>
            Automated builds are available for "standard" Poky and for Poky SDKs and toolchains as well 
            as any testing versions we might have such as poky-bleeding. The toolchains can
            be used either as external standalone toolchains or can be combined with Poky as a
            prebuilt toolchain to reduce build time. Using the external toolchains is simply a
            case of untarring the tarball into the root of your system (it only creates files in
            <filename class="directory">/opt/poky</filename>) and then enabling the option 
            in <filename>local.conf</filename>.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id='intro-getit-dev'>
        <title>Development Checkouts</title>

        <para>
            Poky is available from our GIT repository located at
            git://git.pokylinux.org/poky.git; a web interface to the repository
            can be accessed at <ulink url='http://git.pokylinux.org/'/>.
        </para>

        <para>
           The 'master' is where the deveopment work takes place and you should use this if you're
           after to work with the latest cutting edge developments. It is possible trunk
           can suffer temporary periods of instability while new features are developed and
           if this is undesireable we recommend using one of the release branches.
        </para>
    </section>
</section>
</chapter>
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