GCC (GNU Compiler Collection)

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A Brief History and Introduction to GCC

The original GNU C Compiler (GCC) is developed by Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project. Richard Stallman founded the GNU project in 1984 to create a complete Unix-like operating system as free software, to promote freedom and cooperation among computer users and programmers.

GCC, formerly for 'GNU C Compiler', has grown over times to support many languages such as C (gcc), C++ (g++), Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java (gcj), Fortran (gfortran), Ada (gnat), Go (gccgo), OpenMP, Cilk Plus, and OpenAcc. It is now referred to as 'GNU Compiler Collection'. The mother site for GCC is http://gcc.gnu.org/. The current version is GCC 7.3, released on 2018-01-25.

Nov 21, 2003 My Mac friend this week got her 17-inch Powerbook. She likes how I have Cygwin setup so I can get into a GUI Linux environment on the campus servers.
Quit Cygwin, either by typing 'exit' or clicking on the X in the top right of the screen Now run the windows command line ('DOS Screen') by using the Windows start menu, run, and typing in ' cmd '. A black window should appear (often called a 'DOS Screen').

As a computer consultant, certain clients have forced me to use Cygwin on & off for decades. It's main idea is to put a layer of Unix-like software on MS-Windows, sort of like pouring chocolate.

GCC is a key component of so-called 'GNU Toolchain', for developing applications and writing operating systems. The GNU Toolchain includes:

GNU Compiler Collection (GCC): a compiler suite that supports many languages, such as C/C++ and Objective-C/C++.
GNU Make: an automation tool for compiling and building applications.
GNU Binutils: a suite of binary utility tools, including linker and assembler.
GNU Debugger (GDB).
GNU Autotools: A build system including Autoconf, Autoheader, Automake and Libtool.
GNU Bison: a parser generator (similar to lex and yacc).

GCC is portable and run in many operating platforms. GCC (and GNU Toolchain) is currently available on all Unixes. They are also ported to Windows (by Cygwin, MinGW and MinGW-W64). GCC is also a cross-compiler, for producing executables on different platform.

GCC Versions

The various GCC versions are:

GCC version 1 (1987): Initial version that support C.
GCC version 2 (1992): supports C++.
GCC version 3 (2001): incorporating ECGS (Experimental GNU Compiler System), with improve optimization.
GCC version 4 (2005):
GCC version 5 (2015):
GCC Version 6 (2016):
GCC Version 7 (2017):

C++ Standard Support

There are various C++ standards:

C++98
C++11 (aka C++0x)
C++14 (aka C++1y)
C++17 (aka C++1z)
C++2a (next planned standard in 2020)

The default mode is C++98 for GCC versions prior to 6.1, and C++14 for GCC 6.1 and above. You can use command-line flag -std to explicitly specify the C++ standard. For example,

-std=c++98, or -std=gnu++98 (C++98 with GNU extensions)
-std=c++11, or -std=gnu++11 (C++11 with GNU extensions)
-std=c++14, or -std=gnu++14 (C++14 with GNU extensions), default mode for GCC 6.1 and above.
-std=c++17, or -std=gnu++17 (C++17 with GNU extensions), experimental.
-std=c++2a, or -std=gnu++2a (C++2a with GNU extensions), experimental.

Installing GCC on Unixes

GNU Toolchain, including GCC, is included in all Unixes. It is the standard compiler for most Unix-like operating systems.

Installing GCC on Mac OS X

Open a Terminal, and enter 'gcc --version'. If gcc is not installed, the system will prompt you to install gcc.

Installing GCC on Windows

For Windows, you could either install Cygwin GCC, MinGW GCC or MinGW-W64 GCC. Read 'How to install Cygwin and MinGW'.

Cygwin GCC: Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin is huge and includes most of the Unix tools and utilities. It also included the commonly-used Bash shell.
MinGW: MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows) is a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and GNU Binutils for use in Windows. It also included MSYS (Minimal System), which is basically a Bourne shell (bash).
MinGW-W64: a fork of MinGW that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit windows.

Various GCCs under Cygwin

There are many GCCs under Cygain/MinGW. To differentiate these variations, you need to understand the followings:

Windows/Intel uses these instruction sets: x86 is a 32-bit instruction set; i868 is a 32-bit enhanced version of x86; x86_64 (or amd64) is a 64-bit instruction set.
32-bit compilers/programs can run on 32-bit or 64-bit (backward compatible) Windows, but 64-bit compiler can only run on 64-bit Windows.
64-bit compilers may produce target of 32-bit or 64-bit.
If you use Cygwin's GCC, the target could be native Windows or Cygwin. If the target is native Windows, the code can be distributed and run under Windows. However, if the target is Cygwin, to distribute, you need to distribute Cygwin runtime environment (cygwin1.dll). This is because Cygwin is a Unix emulator under Windows.

MinGW-W64 Target 32/64-bit Native Windows

The MinGW-W64 (a fork of MinGW, available at http://mingw-w64.org/doku.php) supports target of both 32-bit and 64-bit native Windows. You can install 'MinGW-W64' under 'Cygwin' by selecting these packages (under 'devel' category):

mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core: 64-bit C compiler for target of native 64-bit Windows. The executable is 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc'.
mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++: 64-bit C++ compiler for target of native 64-bit Windows. The executable is 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++'.
mingw64-i686-gcc-core: 64-bit C compiler for target of native 32-bit Windows. The executable is 'i686-w64-mingw32-gcc'.
mingw64-i686-gcc-g++: 64-bit C++ compiler for target of native 32-bit Windows. The executable is 'i686-w64-mingw32-g++'.

Notes:

I suggest you install 'mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core' and 'mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++' to provide native 64-bit Windows codes, but skip 'mingw64-i686-gcc-core' and 'mingw64-i686-gcc-g++', unless you need to produce 32-bit Windows applications.
For JNI (Java Native Interface) in 64-bit Java, you need to use 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc' or 'x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++' to produce 64-bit native Windows code.

Run the executables and check the versions:

Other GCCs in Cygwin

Other GCC packages in Cygwin are:

gcc-core, gcc-g++: Basic 64-bit C/C++ compiler target 64-bit Cygwin. You probably should install these two packages too. However, to distribute the code produced, you need to distribute Cygwin Runtime Environment (cygwin1.dll). This is because Cygwin is a Unix emulator under Windows.
cygwin32-gcc-core, cygwin32-gcc-g++: Older 32-bit C/C++ compiler for target 32-bit Cygwin (Obsoleted by gcc-code and gcc-g++?).
mingw-gcc-core, mingw-gcc-g++: Older MinGW 32-bit C/C++ compiler for 32-bit Windows (Obsoleted by MinGW-W64 packages?).

Post Installation

Versions

You could display the version of GCC via --version option:

More details can be obtained via -v option, for example,

Help

You can get the help manual via the --help option. For example,

Man Pages

You can read the GCC manual pages (or man pages) via the man utility:

Reading man pages under CMD or Bash shell can be difficult. You could generate a text file via:

The col utility is needed to strip the backspace. (For Cygwin, it is available in 'Utils', 'util-linux' package.)

Alternatively, you could look for an online man pages, e.g., http:

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