Workflow overview

Writing software in C, as well as in every other compiled language, requires the code to be transformed into an executable format for a specific target to run it. C is portable across different architectures and execution environments. Programmers rely on a set of tools to compile, link, execute, and debug software to a specific target.

Building the firmware image of an embedded system relies on a similar set of tools, which can produce firmware images for specific targets, called a toolchain. This section gives an overview of the common sets of tools required to write software in C and produce programs that are directly executable on the machine that compiled them. The workflow must then be extended and adapted to integrate the toolchain components and produce executable code for the target platform.

The C compiler

The C compiler is a tool responsible for translating source code into machine code, which can be interpreted by a specific CPU. Each compiler...