Embedded Linux for Developers

Anatomy of a toolchain

To get an idea of what is in a typical toolchain, I want to examine the crosstool-NG toolchain you have just created.

The toolchain is in the directory ~/x-tools/arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabihf/bin. In there you will find the cross compiler, arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabihf-gcc. To make use of it, you need to add the directory to your path using the following command:

$ PATH=~/x-tools/arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabihf/bin:$PATH

Now you can take a simple hello world program that looks like this:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  printf ("Hello, world!\n");
  return 0;
}

And compile it like this:

$ arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabihf-gcc helloworld.c -o helloworld

You can confirm that it has been cross ...