Buildroot: install and build the toolchain only

I want to install and build just the toolchain for my Buildroot project. make help suggests that the command make <options> toolchain should work; however, running that command simply returns Nothing to be done for 'toolchain'. and output/host is never created.

You first have to configure Buildroot in order to instruct it about what toolchain you want to produce. See Buildroot quick start in the Buildroot user manual.

If you just downloaded Buildroot, the steps to produce a toolchain are:

1. run make menuconfig

• In Target options select your hardware platform and ABI
• In Toolchain configure the kind of toolchain you want
• exit saving

2. run make toolchain

The toolchain is in output/host/.

EDIT: if you need a toolchain, build the SDK is possibly better, see the answer by @mxxk