GCC

For installation instructions see the Section called Installing GCC-3.3.1 in Chapter 6.

Official Download Location

GCC (3.3.1): 
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gcc/

Contents of GCC

(Last checked against version 3.1.)

The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, including the C and C++ compilers.

GCC installs the following files:

Program Files

c++, c++filt, cc (link to gcc), cc1, cc1plus, collect2, cpp, cpp0, g++, gcc, gccbug, gcov and tradcpp0

Library Files

libgcc.a, libgcc_eh.a, libgcc_s.so, libiberty.a, libstdc++.[a,so], libsupc++.a

Descriptions

(Last checked against version 3.1.)

Program file descriptions

cc, cc1, cc1plus, gcc

These are the C compiler. A compiler translates source code in text format to a format that a computer understands. After a source code file is compiled into an object file, a linker will create an executable file from one or more of these compiler generated object files.

c++, cc1plus, g++

These are the C++ compiler, the equivalent of cc and gcc etc.

c++filt

The C++ language provides function overloading, which means that it is possible to write many functions with the same name (providing each takes parameters of different types). All C++ function names are encoded into a low-level assembly label (this process is known as mangling). The c++filt program does the inverse mapping: it decodes (demangles) low-level names into user-level names so that the linker can keep these overloaded functions from clashing.

collect2

collect2 assists with the compilation of constructors.

cpp, cpp0

cpp pre-processes a source file, such as including the contents of header files into the source file. Simply add a line, such as #include <filename>, to your source file. The preprocessor will insert the contents of the included file into the source file.

gccbug

gccbug is a shell script which is used to simplify the creation of bug reports.

gcov

gcov analyzes programs to help create more efficient, faster running code through optimization.

tradcpp0

No description is currently available.

Library file descriptions

libgcc, libgcc_eh, libgcc_s

Run-time support files for gcc.

libiberty

libiberty is a collection of subroutines used by various GNU programs including getopt, obstack, strerror, strtol and strtoul.

libstdc++

libstdc++ is the C++ library. It is used by C++ programs and contains functions that are frequently used in C++ programs. This way the programmer doesn't have to write certain functions (such as writing a string of text to the screen) from scratch every time he creates a program.

libsupc++

libsupc++ provides support for the c++ programming language. Among other things, libsupc++ contains routines for exception handling.

GCC Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.95.3.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, dirname, echo, expr, hostname, ln
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tail, touch, tr, true, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Find: find
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Tar: tar
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo