Chapter 4. Development Tools

Much like mainstream software developers, embedded system developers need compilers, linkers, interpreters, integrated development environments, and other such development tools. The embedded developer's tools are different, however, in that they typically run on one platform while building applications for another. This is why these tools are often called cross-platform development tools, or cross-development tools, for short.

This chapter discusses the setup, configuration, and use of cross-platform development tools. First, I will discuss how to use a practical project workspace. I will then discuss the GNU cross-platform development toolchain, the C library alternatives, Java, Perl, Python, Ada, other programming languages, integrated development environments, and terminal emulation programs.