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  , or the
DocBook  ). 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  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.

