Understanding and using GNU GCC Compiler Parameters

Posted by Vivek on Saturday April 7, 07 @8:36 pm

The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) includes C, C++, Fortran and other programming languages. GCC was originally written by Richard Stallman in 1985. GCC is the only compiler you can find under wild verity of operating systems / hardware architectures (CPU).

gcc gives us many useful options to make our code into whatever we like. By understanding what these options really do, we can make the program faster and slimmer.

gcc (GNU C Compiler) is actually a collection of frontend tools that does compilation, assembly, and linking. The goal is to produce a ready-to-run executable in a format acceptable to the OS. For Linux, this is ELF (Executable and Linking Format) on x86 (32-bit and 64-bit). But do you know what some of the gcc parameters can do for you? If you're looking for ways to optimize the resulted binary, prepare for a debugging session, or simply observe the steps gcc takes to turn your source code into an executable, getting familiar with these parameters is a must. So, please read on.

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