EABIbased

EABIbased refers to software and object formats that conform to the Embedded Application Binary Interface (EABI). An EABI defines the binary interface between software components in embedded systems, covering data type sizes, alignment, calling conventions, register usage, stack layout, and the interfaces to runtime libraries. By following an EABI, different tools in a toolchain—compilers, assemblers, linkers, and libraries—can produce and link code that runs together on the target architecture.

EABI-based implementations are common on architectures used in embedded devices, particularly ARM and MIPS, where the EABI replaces older, nonstandard or platform-specific ABIs (often called OABI or similar). Within ARM, the EABI is associated with the ARM Architecture Procedure Call Standard (AAPCS), which standardizes how functions receive arguments, return values, and how the stack and registers are managed. Variants may exist to accommodate features such as floating-point support, leading to distinctions like soft-float and hard-float ABIs used by different toolchains and runtimes.

In practice, EABI-based binaries enable cross-compilation for embedded targets and ensure compatibility between the compiler, standard libraries, and runtime environment. Toolchains are often named to reflect this, for example arm-linux-gnueabi or arm-linux-gnueabihf for Linux on ARM, where the suffixes indicate the EABI and whether hardware floating-point is used. Bare-metal toolchains may use arm-eabi or arm-none-eabi. The term helps distinguish these binaries from legacy ABIs and from architectures that implement different binary interfaces.

Overall, EABIbased describes binaries and toolchains designed to work within the standardized Embedded Application Binary Interface framework, promoting portability and interoperability in embedded software development.