An embedded toolchain is a set of software tools aimed to build software for a specific platform. While, in some cases, the complexity of the toolchain can be abstracted through a GUI, it is often distributed as a set of standalone applications, each one serving a specific purpose. Understanding the single tools and learning how to use them properly speeds up the development process and gives us a closer look at how things work under the hood.
GCC is nowadays one of the reference toolchains to build embedded systems, due to its modular structure allowing backends for multiple architectures. Thanks to its open source model, and the flexibility in building tailored toolchains from it, GCC-based toolchains are among the most popular development tools in embedded systems.
Building software using a command-line-based toolchain has several advantages, including the...
