gnueabi

gnueabi is the GNU project's implementation of the ARM Embedded Application Binary Interface (EABI) for Linux user-space. It designates the convention used by the GNU toolchain to build and run 32-bit ARM Linux executables and libraries under the EABI standard.

The EABI standard specifies the calling convention, how functions receive arguments in registers or stack, data type sizes, alignment, support for floating-point operations, and interfaces with the dynamic linker and system calls. The "gnueabi" name specifically refers to GNU's adaptation of the ARM EABI for Linux, generally for the soft-float ABI, with the possibility to use hardware floating point under the "gnueabihf" variant.

Historically, gnueabi superseded older OABI-based toolchains and the armel soft-float ABI used by some early Linux ARM ports. It is widely used in cross-compilation and in native ARM Linux systems provided by major distributions.

Toolchains and packaging: The common cross-compiler triplet arm-linux-gnueabi denotes a toolchain targeting EABI-based ARM Linux with soft-float. In contrast, arm-linux-gnueabihf indicates hard-float support. Linux kernels and libc implementations such as glibc or musl provide libraries compiled for gnueabi; devs must match the ABI to ensure compatibility.

Current status: gnueabi remains relevant for older 32-bit ARM devices and software, but newer devices especially ARMv7 and later often use the hard-float GNUEABIHF or newer ABIs, depending on the distribution and kernel support.