toolchain A collection of tools used to develop for a particular hardware
target, or to work with a particular data format (thus ‘the Crusoe
development toolchain’, or the ‘DocBook
toolchain’). Often used in the context of building software on one
system which will be installed or run on some other device; in that case
the chain of tools usually consists of such items as a particular version
of a compiler, libraries, special headers, etc. May also be used of
text-formatting, page layout, or multimedia tools which render from some
markup to a variety of production formats. Differs from
‘toolkit’ in that the former implies a collection of
semi-independent tools with complementary functions, while
‘toolchain’ implies that each of the parts is a serial stage in
a rather tightly bound pipeline. Seems to have become current in early
1999 and 2000; now common.