+++ Jon Smirl [2010-09-02 13:17 -0400]:
As an embedded developer I'd like to see a standardized tool chain for building on most ARM architectures. There are at least two groups of users for this tool chain - ARM based PCs and embedded systems. There are dozens are various tool chain build systems for ARM. Let's get a standardized tool chain for the older ARM chips into a distribution to stop this needless proliferation.
Emdebian has been providing the Debian gcc builds as cross-toolchains for Debian/Ubuntu for some years now. Did you try those but not find they met your needs, or did you not know about them?
I've been trying to tell embedded engineers not to build a new toolchain for every single project for some years now, but I've met a fair amount of resistance to the idea. It's been many years since I had to build one for my own purposes (I just used the emdebian ones), and it worked very well.
The biggest issue for people using newer hardware is probably currency (i.e toolchains build from distro sources not having support for latest chips), but for your above use-case of "standardized tool chain for the older ARM chips", that has been a solved problem for a long time IMHO.
Those toolchains are now moving into Ubuntu and Debian so you don't even have to add a separate repo, which solves the twin problems of installability (a separate repo can get out of sync) and exposure.
Combined with Linaro keeping things much closer to the bleeding edge I look forward to a time when people will normally try the distro cross-compiler first.
There are still issues with the difficulty of building one gcc to support more than a few target option combinations, and setting build defaults reliably without rebuilding, but hopefully once everyone stops building a new one every time these will get more attention.
Wookey