SoulofDeity wrote:By 'noobs' I was referring to people who are just getting started in os development. Wrong term I guess, but still you wouldn't need to host infinite number gcc toolchains. It's pretty much safe to assume that they're going to be using Windows, Mac, or Linux, and be targeting either i586-elf, x86_64-elf, or arm-elf, or ppc-elf.
That's only 12 toolchains, and if you factor in that people using Window's and Linux most likely won't be targeting arm-elf or ppc-elf, its really only 8 toolchains. I'm not saying they shouldn't learn how to port it because it's a necessity down the road, I just think it would be best if beginners were able to focus more on what they're wanting to do than preparation.
1. There are people using PE format
2. There are more than one linux (ubuntu family, debian family, red hat family, etc) that do not execute the same binary due to different dependency libraries.
3. Some people are playing with MIPS (eg. those runs on router)
4. As noted above, there are multiple versions of binutil and gcc available
5. Some people also integrate their own libc (or libgloss) into gcc
6. Some people does not use gcc at all, but llvm or watcom
In short, you may cover a certain number of builds, but you can never fits all need, and that due to it's quite easy and quick to build one, nobody bothered to give / download binaries, since maintaining the updates for tens of builds is proven to be messy headache.
I just think it would be best if beginners were able to focus more on what they're wanting to do than preparation.
Come on, it take no time at all to follow exactly the step on the wiki, and takes about half an hour to build it. If you have a build script it can be done in 70 seconds. Do it really draw any focus or consume any effort?
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