Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2020

Sony has been researching open source Graphical User Interface (GUI) frameworks available for embedded products. There are many GUI frameworks in OSS, but there are some issues and trade-offs such as functionality, maintainability, compatibility with display manager (X11, Wayland), and software license. For example, in the case of consumer electronics products, higher designability is required. Furthermore, linking mobile apps and web apps and a development environment that facilitates development are required. Therefore, HTLM5/JavaScript using WebView (embedded browser) is often used. However, when using WebView, there are issues such as footprint and vulnerability countermeasure costs. Regarding Wayland, which is being mainly supported by Board Support Package (BSP) of SoC vendors, existing OSS sometimes lacks Wayland's support. And using it as is may cause stability problems. To solve above issues, we have adopted Flutter, which is a GUI framework for mobile and desktop in OSS, and developed to support Wayland protocol, application manager and development environment suitable for embedded systems. In this talk, we will talk about our challenge and exhibit demo applications.