The GNU toolchain is a blanket term for a collection of programming tool

Programming tool

A programming tool or software development tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications...

s produced by the GNU Project

GNU Project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...

. These tools form a toolchain

Toolchain

In software, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that are used to create a product...

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

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 and operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s.

The GNU toolchain plays a vital role in development of Linux kernel

Linux kernel

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

, BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...

, and software for embedded system

Embedded system

An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...

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

Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...

 to other platforms such as Solaris, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 (via Cygwin

Cygwin

Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment...

 and MinGW/MSYS

MinGW

MinGW , formerly mingw32, is a native software port of the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Binutils for use in the development of native Microsoft Windows applications; MinGW can function either as a cross compiler targeting Windows or as a native toolchain run on Windows itself...

) and Sony PlayStation 3

PlayStation 3

The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...

.

Projects included in the GNU toolchain are:

• GNU make: Automation tool for compilation and build;
• GNU Compiler Collection
  GNU Compiler Collection
  The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
  
   (GCC): Suite of compilers for several programming languages;
• GNU Binutils: Suite of tools including linker, assembler and other tools;
• GNU Bison
  GNU bison
  GNU bison, commonly known as Bison, is a parser generator that is part of the GNU Project. Bison reads a specification of a context-free language, warns about any parsing ambiguities, and generates a parser which reads sequences of tokens and decides whether the sequence conforms to the syntax...
  
  : Parser generator
• GNU m4
  GNU m4
  GNU m4 is the GNU version of the m4 macro preprocessor. It is designed to avoid many kinds of limits found in traditional m4s: limits like maximum line lengths, maximum size of a macro, number of macros, etc...
  
  : m4
  M4 (computer language)
  m4 is a general purpose macro processor designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. m4 is an extension of an earlier macro processor m3, written by Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer.-Use:...
  
   macro processor
• GNU Debugger
  GNU Debugger
  The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It 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, Java...
  
   (GDB): Code debugging tool;
• GNU build system
  GNU build system
  The GNU build system, also known as the Autotools, is a suite of programming tools designed to assist in making source-code packages portable to many Unix-like systems....
  
   (autotools):
  • Autoconf
    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....
    
    
  • Autoheader
  • Automake
    Automake
    GNU Automake is a programming tool that produces portable makefiles for use by the make program, used in compiling software. It is made by the Free Software Foundation as one of GNU programs, and is part of the GNU build system. The makefiles produced follow the GNU Coding Standards.It is written...
    
    
  • Libtool
    Libtool
    GNU Libtool is a GNU programming tool from the GNU build system used for creating portable compiled libraries. To quote the introduction in the :Libtool is typically used with Autoconf and Automake, two other tools of the GNU build system....
    
    

See also

• GNU C Library
• GNU Classpath
  GNU Classpath
  GNU Classpath is a project aiming to create a free software implementation of the standard class library for the Java programming language. Despite the massive size of the library to be created, the majority of the task is already done, including Swing, CORBA, and other major parts. The Classpath...
  
  
• CVS
  Concurrent Versions System
  The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...
  
  
• MinGW
  MinGW
  MinGW , formerly mingw32, is a native software port of the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Binutils for use in the development of native Microsoft Windows applications; MinGW can function either as a cross compiler targeting Windows or as a native toolchain run on Windows itself...
  
  
• Cygwin
  Cygwin
  Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment...