Finding a toolchain
You have three choices for your cross development toolchain: you may find a ready built toolchain that matches your needs, you can use the one generated by an embedded build tool which is covered in Chapter 6, Selecting a Build System, or you can create one yourself as described later in this chapter.
A pre-built cross toolchain is an attractive option in that you only have to download and install it, but you are limited to the configuration of that particular toolchain and you are dependent on the person or organization you got it from. Most likely, it will be one of these:
- SoC or board vendor. Most vendors offer a Linux toolchain.
- A consortium dedicated to providing system-level support for a given architecture. For example, Linaro, (https://www.linaro.org) have pre-built toolchains for the ARM architecture.
- Third-party Linux tool vendors such as Mentor Graphics, TimeSys, or MontaVista.
- Cross tool packages for your desktop Linux distribution, for example, Debian-based distributions...
