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Sourcery GCC Code vs Vanilla GCC Compiler, what's the difference?

I found a company that provides GCC based toolkits for ARM, MIPS but I don't know how they differ from vanilla GCC, of ​​course they bring other pieces of software like Eclipse, but when looking only in GCC and Binutils are they different or the same?

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One big difference between a precompiled toolchain (like the one provided by Code Sourcery , MontaVista , Wind River , etc.) and one of the sources is usability. Building a toolchain from scratch, especially for cross-compiling, is tedious and can be a complete pain. Also, the newest versions of glibc (or uClibc ), gcc and binutils arent always compatible as they are developed independently. There are open source tools that make this process easier (e.g. crosstool-NG), but having a proven toolchain optimized for a specific platform can save you a lot of time and headaches. This is especially true at the start of a new project. It also helps keep tech support going when things turn around. Of course ... you have to pay for this most of the time.

So, putting together your own toolchain is likely to save you money and can provide more flexibility in the future. MontaVista, as far as I know, does not include legacy platform support in its newest versions of the toolchain. For example, if you bought MontaVista Pro 4.X and it included a toolchain with gcc 3.3.X, then this will most likely depend on your project. Upgrading to the toolchain from gcc 4.X probably wouldn't be an option.



Hope it helps.

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