arm-none-linux-gnueabi vs arm-linux – EABI vs Non-EABI

 

         EABI is the new Application Binary Interface (ABI) specification for the ARM Architecture introduced in 2005. It aims to provide interoperability between binaries compiled by various compilers like codesourcery, ADS, RVCT, RVDS, etc. Which previous non-EABI binaries couldn’t provide. Thus, It is possible to link libraries created using different compilers with EABI support but old ABI libraries lacked that compatibility. This caused a lot of trouble to me recently. I compiled the linux kernel with EABI turned off. Then I compiled busybox and other libraries using arm-none-linux-gnueabi target as dynamically shared libraries. The kernel won’t load the rootfs built using EABI toolchain. It used to print, Kernel panic – not syncing: Attempted to kill init! I downloaded another toolchain(arm-linux target this time) and compiled the rootfs using it. This time, kernel had no trouble loading the file system. As I searched further, I learned that EABI and non-EABI are not inter-operable and hence the mess. I also learned that all the toolchain supplied by codesourcery since 2005 are EABI based. The arm-linux toolchain I downloaded recently(which is non-EABI) is not from codesourcery.