The Hob is a graphical user interface for the OpenEmbedded build system, which is based on BitBake. You can use the Hob to build custom operating system images within the Yocto Project build environment. Hob simply provides a friendly interface over the build system used during development. In other words, building images with the Hob lets you take care of common build tasks more easily.
For a better understanding of Hob, see the project page at http://www.yoctoproject.org/tools-resources/projects/hob on the Yocto Project website. If you follow the "Documentation" link from the Hob page, you will find a short introductory training video on Hob. The following lists some features of Hob:
You can setup and run Hob using these commands:
$ source oe-init-build-env $ hob
You can set the
MACHINE
for which you are building the image.
You can modify various policy settings such as the package format with which to build, the parallelism BitBake uses, whether or not to build an external toolchain, and which host to build against.
You can manage layers.
You can select a base image and then add extra packages for your custom build.
You can launch and monitor the build from within Hob.