Need suggestion on GNU toolchain selection

hi,

what's the most popular and reliable GNU toolchain solution for ARM target? i am reading Karim's book 'Building Embedded Linux System' which introduced how to build a toolchain manually. it's interesting but seems i have to face with the daunting task of package ( and patches ) selection.

on the other hand, i heard the '

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' which provides off-the-shelf binary toolchain for ARM, but i dont know how many people are using it hence i am not sure if it is a popular choice.

what's your choice and opinion? thanks.

- woody

Reply to
Steven Woody
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Take your pick. Don't build your own!

I have used gnuarm successfully. The other packages should be similar. If you are a hobbyist then take a look at the

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personal license options also.

Regards, Richard.

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    for Cortex-M3, ARM7, ARM9, HCS12, H8S, MSP430 Microblaze, Coldfire, AVR, x86, 8051, PIC24 & dsPIC
Reply to
FreeRTOS.org

Or if you are into embedded Linux on a Linux host, building your own is actually not a bad idea. buildroot.uclibc.org contains a lot of things allowing Linux systems to be built, including automatically building a cross compiler.

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contains a link to crosstool

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Ulf Samuelsson
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Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

Depends a bit on your motivation for using GNU. If it's anything other than 'cos it's free, consider the Rowley CrossWorks toolchain at

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However, it's about US$1k. The debugging environment should be worth it, though.

Cheers, Alf

Reply to
Alf Katz

Actually, I take exception to that. I've found it very useful over time to learn to build the GNU/GCC toolchain from scratch. I usually build using newlib for "bare metal" toolchains, and crosstool is quite useful for linux/glibc variants.

The advantage of building it yourself is that you can adapt to new targets and toolchain upgrades. Just another notch in the experience belt ... ymmv. Noone sait it was easy though ;-)

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Michael N. Moran           (h) 770 516 7918
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Reply to
Michael N. Moran

You really need to be able to build a toolchain yourself.

What happens when you need to incorporate a patch or use a different version? What if you need to move to a host system that isn't supported by your binary vendor? What if you want to move to a target that isn't supported by your binary vendor.

If you archive the source tarballs, patches, and build script then you aren't at the mercy of whoever you got the binary from. You can build for any host environment. You can incorporate any patches you need. Switching targets is also simple.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but after being burned by a tool vendor once or twice, you get a little defensive.

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Reply to
Grant Edwards

Codesourcery toolchain is supported by ARM for latest ABI support. I use it everyday and had no problems. It has varieties for both standalone and linux environments.

Bahadir

Reply to
Bahadir Balban

I can't tell you how many use the tools from

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but I can tell you how many download them! Last month 2253 downloaded ver 4.1.1 of the windows tools and over a thousand downloaded an older 3.4.3 version. All in all over 5000 copies were downloaded in October! I am sure someone is using them...

These tools are listed in several online tutorials on using the GNUARM tool chain and they list

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as the place where they got them. In general, I don't think you will find much difference regardless of the source.

Reply to
rickman

thanks for all your input. in the meantime while i was watching the thread, another tool pop-up, that is 'scratchbox.com'. compared with gnuarm.com, i want to know which one is better and more suitable to my needs?

and, thanks for thoese suggestion about building from scratch, i will try!

Reply to
Steven Woody

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