[yoe] next generation
Fast tooling and builds. No cross-compiling headaches. Easy to
customize/upgrade/debug. One tool for both system engineers and application
developers to ship products faster.
[yoe] next generation is a build system (focused on Embedded Linux for now)
for teams shipping modern edge products. Components in Go, Rust, Zig, Python,
JS/TS, and C/C++ are supported. [yoe] releases often and tracks upstream
closely. The configuration language is easily processed by humans and AI. Build
on your laptop, on native hardware, or in cloud CI — one integrated tool, same
config, same results.
We took what we learned from many years of maintaining and building products
with the Yoe Distribution, started over, and began
building the tool we always wanted. [yoe] next generation is an experiment
in progress — we're sharing the work in the open as it takes shape.
Note: Not everything in the documentation has been implemented yet as this
project is in the early stages.
🎯 Goals
Three north stars guide the experiment — everything else is in service of these:
- Drastically improve developer productivity. Shrink the loop between an
idea and a running image. Fewer rebuilds, fewer context switches, fewer tools
to learn — so engineers spend their time on the product, not on the build.
- Easily integrate complex workloads. Modern edge devices ship Go services,
Rust agents, Python ML, container workloads, and kernel drivers side by side.
Pulling these together should be straightforward, not a custom integration
project each time.
- Scale to build anything. From tiny Zephyr images to complex AI workloads.
From one application to a complete distributed system. One tool, one mental
model — the same workflow on a laptop, a build farm, or cloud CI, with
caching that keeps up as projects grow.
Is [yoe] Right for You?
[yoe] build is not for everyone. If you are building a mission-critical system
that requires bit-for-bit reproducible builds, long-term release freezes, or
extensive compliance certification, use the current generation [Yoe
Distribution](https://yoedistro.org/ based on
Yocto - it is battle-tested for those
requirements.
[yoe] build is designed for edge systems that behave more like cloud systems —
AI workloads and modern-language applications — and for teams that track
upstream closely and prioritize fast iteration over strict reproducibility. If
your product ships frequent updates, runs containerized services, or depends
heavily on Go/Rust/Python ecosystems, [yoe] may be a better fit.
More fundamentally, [yoe] assumes a small-team problem set, not a scaled-down
enterprise one. A startup or ten-person product team doesn't have smaller
versions of an enterprise's problems — it often has different problems entirely,
and adopting tooling built for scale you don't have imports its operational cost
without the payoff (the
You Are Not Google
point. [yoe] is calibrated for the problems small teams and startups actually
have.
🚀 Getting Started
Prerequisites: Linux or macOS with Git and Docker installed. Windows users:
install WSL2 and use the Linux binary (Linux x86_64/Docker is the most tested
configuration). Claude Code is highly recommended, but not required.
To run a built image you also need QEMU. On Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install qemu-system-x86
For KVM acceleration, your user must be in the kvm group. If yoe run reports
failed to initialize kvm: Permission denied, add yourself and pick up the new
group membership:
sudo usermod -aG kvm $(whoami)
newgrp kvm # or log out and back in
# Download the yoe binary (Linux x86_64)
curl -L https://github.com/yoebuild/yoe/releases/latest/download/yoe-Linux-x86_64 -o yoe
# For other platforms, download from https://github.com/yoebuild/yoe/releases/latest
chmod +x yoe
mkdir -p ~/bin
mv yoe ~/bin/
# Make sure ~/bin is in your PATH (add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc if needed)
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
# Create a new project
yoe init yoe-test
cd yoe-test
# Start the TUI (see screenshot below)
yoe
# Navigate to the base-image and press 'b' to build
# When build is complete, press 'r' to run (requires `qemu-system-x86_64` installed on your host)
# Log in a user: root, no password
# Power off when finished (inside running image)
poweroff
The TUI user interface:
dev-image is another included image with a few more things in it. Press the
s key to navigate to the setup menu and select the image.
The / key modifies the unit query to change what units are displayed.
