i386/Linux synthetic target setup

When building for the synthetic Linux target, the resulting binaries are native Linux applications with the HAL providing suitable bindings between the eCos kernel and the Linux kernel.

These Linux applications cannot be run on a Windows system. However, it is possible to write a similar HAL emulation for the Windows kernel if such a testing target is desired.

Tools

The i386 tools’ prefix must match the CPU type on the target Linux box to ensure proper operation. This prefix is determined by the script config.guess. The prefix in itself, which identifies the model of the CPU in the machine on which the tools are built, does not affect the features of eCos.

Be aware that for a synthetic target, eCos relies on features not available in native compilers earlier than egcs-1.1.1. If you have egcs-1.1.1 or later, then you do not need to build new tools. You can check the version using gcc-v or egcs-v.

If you are not building new tools, you should be aware that eCos assumes that the tools i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc, i686-pc-linux-gnu-ar, i686-pc-linux-gnu-ld, and i686-pc-linux-gnu-objcopy are on your system and are the correct versions for use with eCos. The easiest method to ensure that this is the case is probably by creating symlinks (using ln -s) with these names, pointing to the real tools, in some directory on your PATH.

If you have any difficulties, it is almost certainly easiest overall to rebuild the tools.