About the xPack Binary Development Tools

The roots of the xPack Binary Development Tools can be traced back to 2014 in the GNU Arm Eclipse plug-ins, which were later rebranded as GNU MCU Eclipse plug-ins and are now integrated into the Eclipse Embedded CDT.

The first binary package provided the missing make and rm on Windows. Later the GNU Arm Embedded GCC toolchain, OpenOCD, QEMU and GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC toolchain were added (first published on npmjs.com as @gnu-mcu-eclipse/arm-none-eabi-gcc).

In 2019 the xpm project was enhanced to support binary packages, and the projects were migrated to binary xPacks.

To maintain consistency with the rest of the xPack project, the npm scope for publishing the xPack Binary Development Tools was changed from @gnu-mcu-eclipse to @xpack-dev-tools.

In 2022 the xPack Binary Development Tools projects received a significant update by transitioning the build scripts from the cumbersome monolithic XBB Docker images to the more flexible and modular xPacks. XBB version 5.0.0 marked a major milestone for the xPack project, as it was the first self-sustained release. This version enabled the creation of new binary xPacks using existing binary xPacks, eliminating the need for custom Docker images or other compiled tools.

The web site

In October 2024 the website content was added in the website folder, as an instance of the Docusaurus template. Additionally a GitHub Action was added to automatically publish the site upon any pushes to the website Git branch.

The author

This project is currently maintained by Liviu Ionescu (ilg-ul), a senior computer engineer, with expertise in C++/C embedded systems, RTOSes, build tools, operating systems, compilers and Internet technologies.

He can be reached at <ilg@livius.net>. Please note, this email address is provided as a courtesy. For all correspondence related to the xPack Binary Development Tools projects, kindly use the support pages of each individual project).