Introducing toolchains

A toolchain represents a compiler and its associated utilities that are used with the purpose of producing kernels, drivers, and applications necessary for a specific target. A toolchain usually contains a set of tools that are usually linked to each other. It consists of gcc, glibc, binutils, or other optional tools, such as a debugger optional compiler, which is used for specific programming languages, such as C++, Ada, Java, Fortran, or Objective-C.

Usually a toolchain, which is available on a traditional desktop or server, executes on these machines and produces executables and libraries that are available and can run on the same system. A toolchain that is normally used for an embedded development environment is called is a cross toolchain. In this case, programs, such as gcc, run on the host system for a specific target architecture, for which it produces a binary code. This whole process is referred to as cross-compilation, and it is the most common way to build...