Can I roll my own ROS executable?

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Hi

I'm aiming to deploy a single ROS node on an embedded platform (buildroot, AM335x) that bridges between the embedded system and the network by publishing a signal or two, and subscribing to one or two more. I have spent the day figuring how to cross-compile the node for the target, mostly involving getting the ros packages to build from source against the target. I've now got a ros node executable that runs on the target (where I've also deployed the ros libs libros*.so and so on). However, it doesn't manage to contact the master on my workstation.

Now, there may be just some silly config problem and that's why the connection is failing. But my question is - is my approach naive? Is there lots more to ROS that would need to be deployed on the target for this to work? Or is the executable and the libros*.so (etc.) all I really need, save for getting the configuration right?

Any high-level advice gratefully received.

FYI, the reason I'm not using an off-the-shelf package is that there isn't one for buildroot. The reason I'm not switching to yocto is that it was hard enough getting buildroot to work correctly with the platform.

Cheers