Skip to content

Compiling and Running a C program

Compilers

Compiler is a program that translates a C program to machine code or an intermediate code that can be understood by the system. It involves many the following steps: preprocessing, compiling, assembling and linking.

Pre-processing

The pre-processor removes the comments from the files and adds additional components in the code like: * addition of the definitions under the header files added through #include<*.h> * addition of macros defined

This step creates an additional intermediate file with a .i extension.

Compiling

The intermediate file is then compiled to assembly code that is sent to the assembler.

Assembler

The assembler converts the compiled file to machine code and creates an object file (with .o extension)

Linker

Linker links the library files with the object code where all the linking of function calls with their definitions is done. The final output by default is an executable file that can run directly on system.

The GCC Compiler

GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) is one of the popular package that provides standarized compiler tools for C and C++. It can be installed on most systems including Windows, Linux Distros and macOS.

GCC on windows

GCC can be installed on windows using the MYSY2 utility tool. To install:

  • click on the hyperlink above and install the program using the setup file.
  • launch the program once installed
  • paste this code in the active shell 
    pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain
  • Select the default option and let the download complete.
  • Add C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin (or the location of your bin installation) to the PATH variable.

GCC on linux

Most linux distros come with gcc pre-installed or as a dependency of some software you are using already. If you still want the to use the latest version of GCC, update it using the package manager of your choice.

Heres a shell script for ubuntu users: ubuntu_installer.sh

GCC on macOS

GCC is available as a homebrew package and can be installed using brew install gcc. However, clang is much popular for development in macOS environments.