Using the GCC Compiler
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is by far the most dominant compiler (rather, the most
dominant collection of compilers) used on Linux systems. It compiles programs written in C, C++,
Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada. This chapter focuses on the C compiler.
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Programming in Linux Part VI
GCC gives programmers extensive control over the compilation process. That process includes up
to four stages: preprocessing, compilation, assembly, and linking. You can stop the process after
any of these stages to examine the compiler??™s output at that stage. GCC can also handle the various
C dialects, such as ANSI C or traditional (Kernighan and Ritchie) C. You can control the amount
and type of debugging information, if any, to embed in the resulting binary. And like most compilers,
GCC also performs code optimization.
The gcc command invokes the C compiler. To use it, provide it the name of a C source file and use
its -o option to specify the name of the output file. gcc will preprocess, compile, assemble, and
link the program, generating an executable, often called a binary. Here??™s the simplest syntax:
gcc infile.c [-o outfile]
infile.c is a C source code file, and -o says to name the output file outfile. The [] characters
indicate optional arguments throughout this book.
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