[feature] Toolchain type of the package

[redradist]

From the following presentation I saw a new feature package-type: https://youtu.be/v5BMoW9wVg8?t=497

My suggestion is to add a new package_type="toolchain". The reason is that although package_type="application" could be considered as toolchain, toolchain usually has additional standard utility like: linker, objdump, debbuger and etc., and it would be useful to distinguish between type of applications

Also in future conan could install toolchain and generate profile for installed toolchain, for example if toolchain was installed by conan the conanfile.txt could looks like:

[requires]
glfw/3.3.7
glew/2.2.0
glm/0.9.9.8

[generators]
cmake

[toolchain]
clang-17

And conan will figured out profile from toolchain name

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide.

[redradist]

@memsharded Any thoughts on this topic ?

[memsharded]

We have already some tests that simulate the usage of packages containing "toolchain" like things, from compilers, ndk, libc++: https://github.com/conan-io/conan/blob/release/2.0/conans/test/integration/build_requires/test_toolchain_packages.py At the moment it seems that a new package type is not necessary, and tool_requires behave good for the purpose. If there is some other case in which a different package-type will provide different behavior, we can consider it, but the current design would only add a new package types if it is necessary to disambiguate the behavior.

[redradist]

@memsharded

We have already some tests that simulate the usage of packages containing "toolchain" like things, from compilers, ndk, libc++: https://github.com/conan-io/conan/blob/release/2.0/conans/test/integration/build_requires/test_toolchain_packages.py At the moment it seems that a new package type is not necessary, and tool_requires behave good for the purpose. If there is some other case in which a different package-type will provide different behavior, we can consider it, but the current design would only add a new package types if it is necessary to disambiguate the behavior.

Toolchain is not simple tool, it is a bunch of tools that main purpose is to build project.
For example with current tool package type we do not have special attributes for this package like: linker, compiler, objdump and etc.
If we'll add this type of package then it will be possible to assign such attributes to this package

[redradist]

Hi @memsharded,

One additional benefits that this feature could bring is to make Conan equal to PlatformIO for embedded development as well as simplify installing different compilers