Arm GNU Toolchain vs RISC-V GNU Toolchain

Arm GNU Toolchain is a free, open-source set of tools for building C and C++ software for Arm processors. Its integrated, validated packages are based on GCC, Binutils, glibc, Newlib, and GDB, including a debugger. Variants cover bare-metal embedded development as well as Linux kernel and application work. Target processors include Arm A-, R-, and M-profile CPUs, such as Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M, and Neoverse. Arm lists cross-toolchains for Windows x86, Linux x86_64 and AArch64, and macOS x86_64 hosts. Releases are published twice a year and checked with the relevant source projects' test suites for regressions. Support is community-based on a best-effort basis; Arm does not promise prompt public-forum answers or fixes in later releases. The releases come without warranty and may not suit particular use cases. From release 15.3.Rel1 onward, new releases are published only through Arm's GitLab project; the developer.arm.com download page is deprecated.

RISC-V GNU Toolchain is a C and C++ cross-compiler for building bare-metal ELF or Linux ELF toolchains. It supports RV32 and RV64 targets, with RV64GC as the default, and lets builders select architecture extensions and ABIs. Bare-metal configurations can use Newlib or Picolibc; Linux configurations can use glibc, musl, or uClibc. Multilib builds can target 32-bit and 64-bit systems for Newlib and Linux/glibc toolchains. The toolchain includes GCC, binutils, GDB, and supported libraries. LLVM can be built alongside it using a configure option, though that option cannot be combined with multilib settings. The project documents testing with DejaGNU and make check targets, plus QEMU, GDB, and experimental Spike simulator options whose availability varies by toolchain. Hosts include Linux and macOS; Windows use is through a Linux subsystem or Cygwin. A build needs about 8 GiB of disk space, and cloning takes around 6.65 GB. It is free and open-source, with development material aimed at developers and advanced users.