Brillo

Building Brillo: first impressions

Update: Brillo was abandoned by Google in December 2016 in favour of Android Things

Brillo (https://developers.google.com/brillo/) is Google's operating system for devices that are connected to the IoT. They communicate with each other, with the cloud and with mobile apps using a system called Weave (https://developers.google.com/weave/). Brillo and Weave are still under wraps: you have to request an invite from the two links in order to get access to documentation, sample code, and so on. However, there is enough information publicly available to build and test a device running Brillo, which is what this blog is about. I hope to cover Weave in a later post.

Brillo is actually a cut-down version of Android. Basically, all the Java components have been stripped away leaving a much simpler embedded Linux operating system. When building Brillo, some things pop out immediately, which may give a preview of future Android builds:

  • GNU make is out: the build is run by kati/ninja (same for Android N preview)
  • GCC is out: almost all C/C++ components are compiled using clang (same for Android N preview)
  • Linux kernel source is in: the AOSP tree has vendor kernels in hardware/bsp/kernel. The kernel is built using GCC, as it is not (yet) possible to build it with clang
  • DBUS is in: I have not yet found out why
  • Toybox is in: leading to a much more Linux-like command line experience

Below, I show how to build and run the Brillo emulator

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