Toolchain

A toolchain is a set of software development tools used to build and otherwise develop software. Often, the tools are executed sequentially and form a pipeline such that the output of one tool is the input for the next. Sometimes the term is used for a set of related tools that are not necessarily executed sequentially.^[1][2][3]

A relatively common and simple toolchain consists of the tools to build for a particular operating system (OS) and CPU architecture; consisting of a compiler, a linker, and a debugger. With a cross-compiler, a toolchain can support cross-platform development.

For building more complex software systems, many other tools may be in the toolchain. For example, for a video game, the toolchain may include tools for preparing sound effects, music, textures, 3-dimensional models and animations, and for combining these resources into the finished product.^[1][2]

See also

• Buildroot – Tool for building Linux
• Debian build toolchain – Set of programming tools for deploy packages for Debian repositories
• DevOps toolchain – DevOps toolchain release package.
• Framework – Type of library that helps structure other software
• Library – Collection of resources used to develop a computer program
• GNU toolchain – Collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project
• LLVM – Compiler backend for multiple programming languages

References

1. "Toolchain Overview". nongnu.org. 2012-01-03. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
2. "Toolchains". elinux.org. 2013-09-08. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
3. Imran, Saed; Buchheit, Martin; Hollunder, Bernhard; Schreier, Ulf (2015-10-29). Tool Chains in Agile ALM Environments: A Short Introduction. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 9416. pp. 371–380. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26138-6_40. ISBN 978-3-319-26137-9.