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Definition of a Toolchain

Posted on December 21, 2021April 12, 2023 By Barbara Geller

In software development a toolchain is a group of programs or utilities used to create an application or library for a given computer language. Developers traditionally refer to their build tools, compilers, and linkers as the components of a toolchain. Other programs or utilities like debuggers, sanitizers, or profilers, may also be considered as part of a toolchain. This is not an exact term but any tool that is required to create, build, and deploy your software could fall under the umbrella of a toolchain.

  • Project generator or Configuration Tool
    • Reads a configuration file and gathers information about the computer system the user is building on, then generates project build files.
    • Examples: cmake, autotools, meson, bazel
  • Build Tools
    • A build tool reads the project build files and generates the necessary commands to call other tools to build the program.
    • Examples: ninja, make, msbuild
  • Compilers
    • A compiler is used to transform source code into a compiled object format.
    • Examples: clang, gcc, MinGW (Windows), MSVC (Windows)
  • Linkers
    • A linker is used to combine the compiled object files and libraries into a binary format or executable.
    • Examples: ld, lld
  • Shell Environment
    • Will always be present on Unix systems
    • Examples: bash, zsh
  • Debugger
    • A debugger is used to inspect the values of variables defined in the source code at runtime.
    • Examples: gdb, lldb, windbg, Visual Studio
  • Sanitizers
    • Utilities to detect known incorrect code like buffer overflows, accessing a nullptr, or different types of undefined behavior which may be present in your code base.
    • Examples: address sanitizer (asan), memory sanitizer (msan), thread sanitizer (tsan)
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