The latest development version of this page may be more current than this released 2.0.0 version.

3rd Party Toolchains¶

A “3rd party toolchain” is an officially supported toolchain provided by an external organization. Several of these are available.

GNU ARM Embedded¶

Download and install a GNU ARM Embedded build for your operating system and extract it on your file system.

Warning

Do not install the toolchain into a path with spaces. On Windows, we’ll assume you install into the directory C:\gnu_arm_embedded.

Warning

The GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain for Windows, version 8-2018-q4-major has a critical bug and should not be used. Toolchain version 7-2018-q2-update is known to work.
Set these environment variables:
- Set ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT to gnuarmemb.
- Set GNUARMEMB_TOOLCHAIN_PATH to the toolchain installation directory.

To check that you have set these variables correctly in your current environment, follow these example shell sessions (the GNUARMEMB_TOOLCHAIN_PATH values may be different on your system):

# Linux, macOS:
$ echo $ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT
gnuarmemb
$ echo $GNUARMEMB_TOOLCHAIN_PATH
/home/you/Downloads/gnu_arm_embedded

# Windows
> echo %ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT%
gnuarmemb
> echo %GNUARMEMB_TOOLCHAIN_PATH%
C:\gnu_arm_embedded

Crosstool-NG¶

You can build toolchains from source code using crosstool-NG.

Follow the steps on the crosstool-NG website to prepare your host.
Follow the Zephyr SDK with Crosstool NG instructions to build your toolchain. Repeat as necessary to build toolchains for multiple target architectures.

You will need to clone the sdk-ng repo and run the following command:
```
./go.sh <arch>
```
Note

Currently, only i586 and Arm toolchain builds are verified.
Set these environment variables:
- Set ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT to xtools.
- Set XTOOLS_TOOLCHAIN_PATH to the toolchain build directory.
To check that you have set these variables correctly in your current environment, follow these example shell sessions (the XTOOLS_TOOLCHAIN_PATH values may be different on your system):
```
# Linux, macOS:
$ echo $ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT
xtools
$ echo $XTOOLS_TOOLCHAIN_PATH
/Volumes/CrossToolNGNew/build/output/
```