Toolchain and Embedded Distributions

Start from scratch with FSF/OSS sources

Creating a toolchain and bootable root file system starting from sources is certainly the most challenging approach. It usually requires additional patches and sometimes matching versions of sources. While support for Xtensa is integrated in most toolchain tools, they require additional configuration files to support a specific processor configuration. Tensilica, for example, provides a set of these files as part of the processor configuration download in form of an overlay.

crosstool-NG (build instructions for Xtensa)

crosstool-NG (http://crosstool-ng.org/) provides a system to build a complete toolchain. It supports various C-libraries (Multilib, uClibc, glibc, and eglibc), but can also be used to build a 'bare' toolchain. The current version does not yet support Xtensa as a target, but a development version can be retrieved from the local GIT repositories. More information for building a toolchain for Xtensa using crosstool-NG can be found here.

BuildRoot (build instructions for Xtensa)

Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that makes it easy to generate a cross-compilation toolchain and root file system for your target Linux system. Xtensa is fully supported in the official tree. For build instructions, see Buildroot.