Which gcc version for MIPS?

["Günter Dannoritzer" <dannoritzer@web.de>]

Hi,

I am trying to get my feed wet with the MIPS architecture and I am
looking into getting the gcc cross compiler going on my openSuse 10.2
system.

On openSuse there is already a binutils 2.17 package available and I was
wondering whether it is as simple as compiling gcc with MIPS support for
that binutils package?

I looked at the Toolchain page at

  http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Toolchains

and it explains the compilation of gcc fairly simple. On the page it
says to use gcc 3.4.4 as that seems to be the version that allows to
compile a Linux Kernel without problems, however, if I look at the
crosstools page of Dan Kegel

 http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.43/buildlogs/

it shows that there is no version that compiles a listed Linux Kernel
successful.

Can anybody give me some help in deciding what gcc version to use?

Does the gcc version need to match a certain binutils version?

Another question I have about having a mips and mipsel toolchain. I am
aware that some MIPS procecessors can change the endian-ness. In the gcc
documentation I saw that there is a -EB and -EL switch to select the
endianes. What is then the reason to have two toolchains?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Guenter