Difference between revisions of "Toolchain"

Revision as of 13:41, 26 February 2009

How-To install Armadeus Software Development Kit for Linux/Window$

Forewords

Before writing your first program or changing some of your system's utilities, you will need to build the tools required to compile them on your Host system (cross compilation). The GNU toolchain will be used.

Lexical

• Binutils: several GNU utilities to generate executable files
• Buildroot: set of Makefiles that allow to entirely build embedded Linux systems
• Busybox: "swiss knife" of the embedded Linux (regroup many common programs in one executable)
• GCC: GNU C compiler
• GDB: GNU debugger
• rootfs (root filesystem): filesystem image which will be installed on your target and used by Linux as root ("/") mountpoint.
• U-Boot: Bios / Bootloader

Recommended System Requirements

• HD free space: at least 3GB
• 1GB RAM is preferable
• 2GHz processor with a 533MHz FSB
• High speed Internet connection (1Mbits)

With these settings, you will get a complete toolchain, Linux and the RootFS in about 1h30.

Linux installation

Toolchain installation on Linux systems.

Window$ installation

There are 3 possibilities to install Armadeus SDK on Window$ Hosts:

• Cygwin (no more supported)
• VMWare
• VirtualBox / QEmu x86

After a performance test with VMWare, it is clear that Cygwin won't be supported anymore. We have observed quite a factor 2 in terms of compilation improvements with VMWare

• What are VMWare & Virtual Box ? They are virtualization tools able to run a standard Linux distribution on a native Window$ system or Window$ on a Linux native system.
• VMWare player is free. VMWare desktop (used to create the first virtual system) is available for evaluation. You need it only one time.
• VirtualBox is a Open Source software.

Be aware that VMWare/VirtualBox will require more disk space than cygwin, because a complete Linux distribution will be installed.
So, on Window$ Hosts, installing the SDK will summary in:

• install VMWare or VirtualBox,
• install a Linux distribution on it (Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Gentoo,... as you like)
• and then follow Linux installation steps.

Windows installation with Cygwin (no more used)