The preferred development environment looks like this:

~/axis/       (or whatever name you choose, this is your "root" directory)
  apps/       ; This is where the applications are
    README        ; Index over applications. 
    Rules.elinux  ; Common Makefile rules
    shell/        ; sash and sh
    sftpd/        ; A simple ftp server
    init/         ; A simple init program
    telnetd/      ; A simple telnet deamon
    ramtools/     ; Tool and program to compress and uncompress RAM filesystem
    ...
  elinux/     ; This is where the Linux/ETRAX kernel are
    ..
  libs/       ; This is where the libraries are
    cgiparser/
    glibc/
    readline/
    termcap/
    uC-libc/
  products/   ; This is where product definitions and specific files are
  tools/      ; This is where the tools are
    e100boot/     ; The boot loader.
    ..
----
Untar the files starting with these prefixes in your "root" directory,
e.g "~/axis/" using "tar xvzf filename".