The primary use for OE is to cross-compile software on a fast workstation, but there are times during development or evaluating technology where it may be useful to compile software on the target device. There is also some software that is simply too nasty for most of us to figure out how to cross-compile so one workaround is to build a binary on the target system, and then package that binary in subsequent image builds. This hack should only be used as a last resort in production builds.
The following packages can be added to the image, or installed at runtime using a package manager such as opkg.