• images/ where all the images (kernel image, bootloader and root filesystem images) are stored. These are the files you need
to put on your target system.
• build/ where all the components are built (this includes tools needed by Buildroot on the host and packages compiled for
the target). This directory contains one subdirectory for each of these components.
• staging/ which contains a hie rarchy similar to a root filesystem hierarchy. This directory contains the headers and libraries
of the cross-compilation toolchain and all the userspace packages selected for the target. However, this directory is not intended
to be the root filesystem for the target: it contains a lot of development files, unstripped binaries and libraries that make it far
too big for an embedded system. These development files are used to compile libraries and applications for the target that
depend on other libraries.
• target/ which contains almost the complete root filesystem for the target: everything needed is present except the device
files in /dev/ (Buildroot can’t create them because Buildroot doesn’t run as root and doesn’t want to run as root). Also, it
doesn’t have the correct permissions (e.g. setuid for the busybox binary). Therefore, this directory should not be used on
your target. Instead, you should use one of the images built in the images/ directory. If you need an extracted image of
the root filesystem for booting over NFS, then use the tarball image generated in images/ and extract it as root. Compared
to staging/, target/ contains only the files and libraries needed to run the selected target applications: the development
files (headers, etc.) are not present, the binaries are stripped.
• host/ contains the installation of tools compiled for the host that are needed for the proper execution of Buildroot, including
the cross-compilation toolchain.