The GNU toolchain is a broad collection of

programming tool A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can b ...

s produced by the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborat ...

. These tools form a

toolchain In software, a toolchain is a set of programming tools that is used to perform a complex software development task or to create a software product, which is typically another computer program or a set of related programs. In general, the tools for ...

(a suite of tools used in a serial manner) used for developing software

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s. The GNU toolchain plays a vital role in development of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, some BSD systems, and software for

embedded system An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' ...

s. Parts of the GNU toolchain are also directly used with or

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to other platforms such as Solaris,

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, Microsoft Windows (via Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS),

Sony PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 2005 ...

(used by PSP modding scene) and

Sony PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

Components

Projects included in the GNU toolchain are: * GNU make: an automation tool for compilation and build *

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free softwar ...

(GCC): a suite of compilers for several programming languages *

GNU C Library The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++ (and, indirectly, other programming languages). It was started in the 1980s by ...

(glibc): core C library including headers, libraries, and dynamic loader *

GNU Binutils The GNU Binary Utilities, or , are a set of programming tools for creating and managing binary programs, object files, libraries, profile data, and assembly source code. Tools They were originally written by programmers at Cygnus Solutions. ...

: a suite of tools including linker, assembler and other tools * GNU Bison: a

parser generator In computer science, a compiler-compiler or compiler generator is a programming tool that creates a parser, interpreter, or compiler from some form of formal description of a programming language and machine. The most common type of compiler- ...

, often used with the

Flex lexical analyser Flex (fast lexical analyzer generator) is a free and open-source software alternative to lex. It is a computer program that generates lexical analyzers (also known as "scanners" or "lexers"). It is frequently used as the lex implementation toget ...

* GNU m4: an m4 macro processor *

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others. History GDB was first written ...

(GDB): a code debugging tool * GNU Autotools (GNU Build System):

Autoconf GNU Autoconf is a tool for producing configure scripts for building, installing, and packaging software on computer systems where a Bourne shell is available. Autoconf is agnostic about the programming languages used, but it is often used for ...

Automake In software development, GNU Automake is a programming tool to automate parts of the compilation process. It eases usual compilation problems. For example, it points to needed dependencies. It automatically generates one or more ''Makefile.in ...

and Libtool

References

External links

GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection

Prebuilt Win32 GNU Toolchains for various embedded platforms
Programming tools

{{Programming-software-stub

Components

See also

References

External links