Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that makes it easy to generate a complete embedded Linux system. Buildroot can generate any or all of a cross-compilation toolchain, a root filesystem, a kernel image and a bootloader image. Buildroot is useful mainly for people working with small or embedded systems, using various CPU architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc.) : it automates the building process of your embedded system and eases the cross-compilation process.

The major Buildroot features are:

- Can handle everything in your embedded system development project: cross-compiling toolchain, root filesystem generation, kernel image compilation and bootloader compilation. Buildroot is also sufficiently flexible that it can also be used for only one or several of these steps.
- Is very easy to set up, thanks to its menuconfig, gconfig and xconfig configuration interfaces, familiar to all embedded Linux developers. Building a basic embedded Linux system with Buildroot typically takes 15-30 minutes.
- Supports several hundreds of packages for userspace applications and libraries: X.org stack, Gtk2, Qt, DirectFB, SDL, GStreamer and a large number of network-related and system-related utilities and libraries are supported.
- Supports multiple filesystem types for the root filesystem image: JFFS2, UBIFS, tarballs, romfs, cramfs, squashfs and more.
- Can generate an (e)glibc or uClibc cross-compilation toolchain, or re-use your existing glibc, eglibc or uClibc cross-compilation toolchain
- Has a simple structure that makes it easy to understand and extend. It relies only on the well-known Makefile language.

Buildroot is maintained by Peter Korsgaard, and licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE V2 (Or later). Stable releases are delivered every three months.