Using and Porting GNU CC



Richard M. Stallman




Last updated 14 June 1995


for version 2.7

Copyright © 1988, 89, 92, 93, 94, 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc.



For GCC Version 2.7.


Published by the Free Software Foundation
675 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA


Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the sections entitled “GNU General Public License,” “Funding for Free Software,” and “Protect Your Freedom—Fight ‘Look And Feel’” are included exactly as in the original, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that the sections entitled “GNU General Public License,” “Funding for Free Software,” and “Protect Your Freedom—Fight ‘Look And Feel’”, and this permission notice, may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original English.


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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright © 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

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Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

  1. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work, and a “work based on the Program” means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modification”.) Each licensee is addressed as “you”.

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

  2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

    You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

  3. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
    1. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
    2. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
    3. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

    These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

    Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

    In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

  4. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
    1. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
    2. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
    3. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

    The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

    If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

  5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
  6. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
  7. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
  8. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

    If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

    It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

    This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

  9. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
  10. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

    Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

  11. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
  12. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
  13. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

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How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) 19yy  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or 
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'.  
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it 
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items—whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.


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Contributors to GNU CC

In addition to Richard Stallman, several people have written parts of GNU CC.


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1 Funding Free Software

If you want to have more free software a few years from now, it makes sense for you to help encourage people to contribute funds for its development. The most effective approach known is to encourage commercial redistributors to donate.

Users of free software systems can boost the pace of development by encouraging for-a-fee distributors to donate part of their selling price to free software developers—the Free Software Foundation, and others.

The way to convince distributors to do this is to demand it and expect it from them. So when you compare distributors, judge them partly by how much they give to free software development. Show distributors they must compete to be the one who gives the most.

To make this approach work, you must insist on numbers that you can compare, such as, “We will donate ten dollars to the Frobnitz project for each disk sold.” Don’t be satisfied with a vague promise, such as “A portion of the profits are donated,” since it doesn’t give a basis for comparison.

Even a precise fraction “of the profits from this disk” is not very meaningful, since creative accounting and unrelated business decisions can greatly alter what fraction of the sales price counts as profit. If the price you pay is $50, ten percent of the profit is probably less than a dollar; it might be a few cents, or nothing at all.

Some redistributors do development work themselves. This is useful too; but to keep everyone honest, you need to inquire how much they do, and what kind. Some kinds of development make much more long-term difference than others. For example, maintaining a separate version of a program contributes very little; maintaining the standard version of a program for the whole community contributes much. Easy new ports contribute little, since someone else would surely do them; difficult ports such as adding a new CPU to the GNU C compiler contribute more; major new features or packages contribute the most.

By establishing the idea that supporting further development is “the proper thing to do” when distributing free software for a fee, we can assure a steady flow of resources into making more free software.

Copyright (C) 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this section is permitted
without royalty; alteration is not permitted.

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2 Protect Your Freedom—Fight “Look And Feel”

This section is a political message from the League for Programming Freedom to the users of GNU CC. We have included it here because the issue of interface copyright is important to the GNU project.

Apple and Lotus have tried to create a new form of legal monopoly: a copyright on a user interface.

An interface is a kind of language—a set of conventions for communication between two entities, human or machine. Until a few years ago, the law seemed clear: interfaces were outside the domain of copyright, so programmers could program freely and implement whatever interface the users demanded. Imitating de-facto standard interfaces, sometimes with improvements, was standard practice in the computer field. These improvements, if accepted by the users, caught on and became the norm; in this way, much progress took place.

Computer users, and most software developers, were happy with this state of affairs. However, large companies such as Apple and Lotus would prefer a different system—one in which they can own interfaces and thereby rid themselves of all serious competitors. They hope that interface copyright will give them, in effect, monopolies on major classes of software.

Other large companies such as IBM and Digital also favor interface monopolies, for the same reason: if languages become property, they expect to own many de-facto standard languages. But Apple and Lotus are the ones who have actually sued. Lotus has won lawsuits against two small companies, which were thus put out of business. Then they sued Borland; this case is now before the court of appeals. Apple’s lawsuit against HP and Microsoft is also being decided by an appeals court. Widespread rumors that Apple had lost the case are untrue; as of July 1994, the final outcome is unknown.

If the monopolists get their way, they will hobble the software field:

If interface monopolies are accepted, other large companies are waiting to grab theirs:

Users invest a great deal of time and money in learning to use computer interfaces. Far more, in fact, than software developers invest in developing and even implementing the interfaces. Whoever can own an interface, has made its users into captives, and misappropriated their investment.

To protect our freedom from monopolies like these, a group of programmers and users have formed a grass-roots political organization, the League for Programming Freedom.

The purpose of the League is to oppose monopolistic practices such as interface copyright and software patents. The League calls for a return to the legal policies of the recent past, in which programmers could program freely. The League is not concerned with free software as an issue, and is not affiliated with the Free Software Foundation.

The League’s activities include publicizing the issue, as is being done here, and filing friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of defendants sued by monopolists. Recently the League filed a friend-of-the-court brief for Borland in its appeal against Lotus.

The League’s membership rolls include John McCarthy, inventor of Lisp, Marvin Minsky, founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, Guy L. Steele, Jr., author of well-known books on Lisp and C, as well as Richard Stallman, the developer of GNU CC. Please join and add your name to the list. Membership dues in the League are $42 per year for programmers, managers and professionals; $10.50 for students; $21 for others.

Activist members are especially important, but members who have no time to give are also important. Surveys at major ACM conferences have indicated a vast majority of attendees agree with the League. If just ten percent of the programmers who agree with the League join the League, we will probably triumph.

To join, or for more information, phone (617) 243-4091 or write to:

League for Programming Freedom
1 Kendall Square #143
P.O. Box 9171
Cambridge, MA 02139

You can also send electronic mail to lpf@uunet.uu.net.

In addition to joining the League, here are some suggestions from the League for other things you can do to protect your freedom to write programs:

Democracy means nothing if you don’t use it. Stand up and be counted!


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3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C

The C, C++, and Objective C versions of the compiler are integrated; the GNU C compiler can compile programs written in C, C++, or Objective C.

“GCC” is a common shorthand term for the GNU C compiler. This is both the most general name for the compiler, and the name used when the emphasis is on compiling C programs.

When referring to C++ compilation, it is usual to call the compiler “G++”. Since there is only one compiler, it is also accurate to call it “GCC” no matter what the language context; however, the term “G++” is more useful when the emphasis is on compiling C++ programs.

We use the name “GNU CC” to refer to the compilation system as a whole, and more specifically to the language-independent part of the compiler. For example, we refer to the optimization options as affecting the behavior of “GNU CC” or sometimes just “the compiler”.

Front ends for other languages, such as Ada 9X, Fortran, Modula-3, and Pascal, are under development. These front-ends, like that for C++, are built in subdirectories of GNU CC and link to it. The result is an integrated compiler that can compile programs written in C, C++, Objective C, or any of the languages for which you have installed front ends.

In this manual, we only discuss the options for the C, Objective-C, and C++ compilers and those of the GNU CC core. Consult the documentation of the other front ends for the options to use when compiling programs written in other languages.

G++ is a compiler, not merely a preprocessor. G++ builds object code directly from your C++ program source. There is no intermediate C version of the program. (By contrast, for example, some other implementations use a program that generates a C program from your C++ source.) Avoiding an intermediate C representation of the program means that you get better object code, and better debugging information. The GNU debugger, GDB, works with this information in the object code to give you comprehensive C++ source-level editing capabilities (see C and C++ in Debugging with GDB).


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4 Known Causes of Trouble with GNU CC

This section describes known problems that affect users of GNU CC. Most of these are not GNU CC bugs per se—if they were, we would fix them. But the result for a user may be like the result of a bug.

Some of these problems are due to bugs in other software, some are missing features that are too much work to add, and some are places where people’s opinions differ as to what is best.


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4.1 Actual Bugs We Haven’t Fixed Yet


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4.2 Installation Problems

This is a list of problems (and some apparent problems which don’t really mean anything is wrong) that show up during installation of GNU CC.


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4.3 Cross-Compiler Problems

You may run into problems with cross compilation on certain machines, for several reasons.


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4.4 Interoperation

This section lists various difficulties encountered in using GNU C or GNU C++ together with other compilers or with the assemblers, linkers, libraries and debuggers on certain systems.


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4.5 Problems Compiling Certain Programs

Certain programs have problems compiling.


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4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC

There are several noteworthy incompatibilities between GNU C and most existing (non-ANSI) versions of C. The ‘-traditional’ option eliminates many of these incompatibilities, but not all, by telling GNU C to behave like the other C compilers.


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4.7 Fixed Header Files

GNU CC needs to install corrected versions of some system header files. This is because most target systems have some header files that won’t work with GNU CC unless they are changed. Some have bugs, some are incompatible with ANSI C, and some depend on special features of other compilers.

Installing GNU CC automatically creates and installs the fixed header files, by running a program called fixincludes (or for certain targets an alternative such as fixinc.svr4). Normally, you don’t need to pay attention to this. But there are cases where it doesn’t do the right thing automatically.


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4.8 Standard Libraries

GNU CC by itself attempts to be what the ISO/ANSI C standard calls a conforming freestanding implementation. This means all ANSI C language features are available, as well as the contents of ‘float.h’, ‘limits.h’, ‘stdarg.h’, and ‘stddef.h’. The rest of the C library is supplied by the vendor of the operating system. If that C library doesn’t conform to the C standards, then your programs might get warnings (especially when using ‘-Wall’) that you don’t expect.

For example, the sprintf function on SunOS 4.1.3 returns char * while the C standard says that sprintf returns an int. The fixincludes program could make the prototype for this function match the Standard, but that would be wrong, since the function will still return char *.

If you need a Standard compliant library, then you need to find one, as GNU CC does not provide one. The GNU C library (called glibc) has been ported to a number of operating systems, and provides ANSI/ISO, POSIX, BSD and SystemV compatibility. You could also ask your operating system vendor if newer libraries are available.


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4.9 Disappointments and Misunderstandings

These problems are perhaps regrettable, but we don’t know any practical way around them.


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4.10 Common Misunderstandings with GNU C++

C++ is a complex language and an evolving one, and its standard definition (the ANSI C++ draft standard) is also evolving. As a result, your C++ compiler may occasionally surprise you, even when its behavior is correct. This section discusses some areas that frequently give rise to questions of this sort.


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4.10.1 Declare and Define Static Members

When a class has static data members, it is not enough to declare the static member; you must also define it. For example:

class Foo
{
  …
  void method();
  static int bar;
};

This declaration only establishes that the class Foo has an int named Foo::bar, and a member function named Foo::method. But you still need to define both method and bar elsewhere. According to the draft ANSI standard, you must supply an initializer in one (and only one) source file, such as:

int Foo::bar = 0;

Other C++ compilers may not correctly implement the standard behavior. As a result, when you switch to g++ from one of these compilers, you may discover that a program that appeared to work correctly in fact does not conform to the standard: g++ reports as undefined symbols any static data members that lack definitions.


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4.10.2 Temporaries May Vanish Before You Expect

It is dangerous to use pointers or references to portions of a temporary object. The compiler may very well delete the object before you expect it to, leaving a pointer to garbage. The most common place where this problem crops up is in classes like the libg++ String class, that define a conversion function to type char * or const char *. However, any class that returns a pointer to some internal structure is potentially subject to this problem.

For example, a program may use a function strfunc that returns String objects, and another function charfunc that operates on pointers to char:

String strfunc ();
void charfunc (const char *);

In this situation, it may seem natural to write ‘charfunc (strfunc ());’ based on the knowledge that class String has an explicit conversion to char pointers. However, what really happens is akin to ‘charfunc (strfunc ().convert ());’, where the convert method is a function to do the same data conversion normally performed by a cast. Since the last use of the temporary String object is the call to the conversion function, the compiler may delete that object before actually calling charfunc. The compiler has no way of knowing that deleting the String object will invalidate the pointer. The pointer then points to garbage, so that by the time charfunc is called, it gets an invalid argument.

Code like this may run successfully under some other compilers, especially those that delete temporaries relatively late. However, the GNU C++ behavior is also standard-conformant, so if your program depends on late destruction of temporaries it is not portable.

If you think this is surprising, you should be aware that the ANSI C++ committee continues to debate the lifetime-of-temporaries problem.

For now, at least, the safe way to write such code is to give the temporary a name, which forces it to remain until the end of the scope of the name. For example:

String& tmp = strfunc ();
charfunc (tmp);

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4.11 Caveats of using protoize

The conversion programs protoize and unprotoize can sometimes change a source file in a way that won’t work unless you rearrange it.


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4.12 Certain Changes We Don’t Want to Make

This section lists changes that people frequently request, but which we do not make because we think GNU CC is better without them.


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4.13 Warning Messages and Error Messages

The GNU compiler can produce two kinds of diagnostics: errors and warnings. Each kind has a different purpose:

Warnings may indicate danger points where you should check to make sure that your program really does what you intend; or the use of obsolete features; or the use of nonstandard features of GNU C or C++. Many warnings are issued only if you ask for them, with one of the ‘-W’ options (for instance, ‘-Wall’ requests a variety of useful warnings).

GNU CC always tries to compile your program if possible; it never gratuitously rejects a program whose meaning is clear merely because (for instance) it fails to conform to a standard. In some cases, however, the C and C++ standards specify that certain extensions are forbidden, and a diagnostic must be issued by a conforming compiler. The ‘-pedantic’ option tells GNU CC to issue warnings in such cases; ‘-pedantic-errors’ says to make them errors instead. This does not mean that all non-ANSI constructs get warnings or errors.

@xref{Warning Options,,Options to Request or Suppress Warnings}, for more detail on these and related command-line options.


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5 Reporting Bugs

Your bug reports play an essential role in making GNU CC reliable.

When you encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to see if it is already known. See section Known Causes of Trouble with GNU CC. If it isn’t known, then you should report the problem.

Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may not. (If it does not, look in the service directory; see How To Get Help with GNU CC.) In any case, the principal function of a bug report is to help the entire community by making the next version of GNU CC work better. Bug reports are your contribution to the maintenance of GNU CC.

Since the maintainers are very overloaded, we cannot respond to every bug report. However, if the bug has not been fixed, we are likely to send you a patch and ask you to tell us whether it works.

In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information that makes for fixing the bug.


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5.1 Have You Found a Bug?

If you are not sure whether you have found a bug, here are some guidelines:


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5.2 Where to Report Bugs

Send bug reports for GNU C to ‘bug-gcc@prep.ai.mit.edu’.

Send bug reports for GNU C++ to ‘bug-g++@prep.ai.mit.edu’. If your bug involves the C++ class library libg++, send mail to ‘bug-lib-g++@prep.ai.mit.edu’. If you’re not sure, you can send the bug report to both lists.

Do not send bug reports to ‘help-gcc@prep.ai.mit.edu’ or to the newsgroup ‘gnu.gcc.help’. Most users of GNU CC do not want to receive bug reports. Those that do, have asked to be on ‘bug-gcc’ and/or ‘bug-g++’.

The mailing lists ‘bug-gcc’ and ‘bug-g++’ both have newsgroups which serve as repeaters: ‘gnu.gcc.bug’ and ‘gnu.g++.bug’. Each mailing list and its newsgroup carry exactly the same messages.

Often people think of posting bug reports to the newsgroup instead of mailing them. This appears to work, but it has one problem which can be crucial: a newsgroup posting does not contain a mail path back to the sender. Thus, if maintainers need more information, they may be unable to reach you. For this reason, you should always send bug reports by mail to the proper mailing list.

As a last resort, send bug reports on paper to:

GNU Compiler Bugs
Free Software Foundation
675 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139

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5.3 How to Report Bugs

The fundamental principle of reporting bugs usefully is this: report all the facts. If you are not sure whether to state a fact or leave it out, state it!

Often people omit facts because they think they know what causes the problem and they conclude that some details don’t matter. Thus, you might assume that the name of the variable you use in an example does not matter. Well, probably it doesn’t, but one cannot be sure. Perhaps the bug is a stray memory reference which happens to fetch from the location where that name is stored in memory; perhaps, if the name were different, the contents of that location would fool the compiler into doing the right thing despite the bug. Play it safe and give a specific, complete example. That is the easiest thing for you to do, and the most helpful.

Keep in mind that the purpose of a bug report is to enable someone to fix the bug if it is not known. It isn’t very important what happens if the bug is already known. Therefore, always write your bug reports on the assumption that the bug is not known.

Sometimes people give a few sketchy facts and ask, “Does this ring a bell?” This cannot help us fix a bug, so it is basically useless. We respond by asking for enough details to enable us to investigate. You might as well expedite matters by sending them to begin with.

Try to make your bug report self-contained. If we have to ask you for more information, it is best if you include all the previous information in your response, as well as the information that was missing.

Please report each bug in a separate message. This makes it easier for us to track which bugs have been fixed and to forward your bugs reports to the appropriate maintainer.

Do not compress and encode any part of your bug report using programs such as ‘uuencode’. If you do so it will slow down the processing of your bug. If you must submit multiple large files, use ‘shar’, which allows us to read your message without having to run any decompression programs.

To enable someone to investigate the bug, you should include all these things:

Here are some things that are not necessary:


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5.4 Sending Patches for GNU CC

If you would like to write bug fixes or improvements for the GNU C compiler, that is very helpful. Send suggested fixes to the bug report mailing list, bug-gcc@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Please follow these guidelines so we can study your patches efficiently. If you don’t follow these guidelines, your information might still be useful, but using it will take extra work. Maintaining GNU C is a lot of work in the best of circumstances, and we can’t keep up unless you do your best to help.


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6 How To Get Help with GNU CC

If you need help installing, using or changing GNU CC, there are two ways to find it:


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7 Using GNU CC on VMS

Here is how to use GNU CC on VMS.


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7.1 Include Files and VMS

Due to the differences between the filesystems of Unix and VMS, GNU CC attempts to translate file names in ‘#include’ into names that VMS will understand. The basic strategy is to prepend a prefix to the specification of the include file, convert the whole filename to a VMS filename, and then try to open the file. GNU CC tries various prefixes one by one until one of them succeeds:

  1. The first prefix is the ‘GNU_CC_INCLUDE:’ logical name: this is where GNU C header files are traditionally stored. If you wish to store header files in non-standard locations, then you can assign the logical ‘GNU_CC_INCLUDE’ to be a search list, where each element of the list is suitable for use with a rooted logical.
  2. The next prefix tried is ‘SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSLIB.]’. This is where VAX-C header files are traditionally stored.
  3. If the include file specification by itself is a valid VMS filename, the preprocessor then uses this name with no prefix in an attempt to open the include file.
  4. If the file specification is not a valid VMS filename (i.e. does not contain a device or a directory specifier, and contains a ‘/’ character), the preprocessor tries to convert it from Unix syntax to VMS syntax.

    Conversion works like this: the first directory name becomes a device, and the rest of the directories are converted into VMS-format directory names. For example, the name ‘X11/foobar.h’ is translated to ‘X11:[000000]foobar.h’ or ‘X11:foobar.h’, whichever one can be opened. This strategy allows you to assign a logical name to point to the actual location of the header files.

  5. If none of these strategies succeeds, the ‘#include’ fails.

Include directives of the form:

#include foobar

are a common source of incompatibility between VAX-C and GNU CC. VAX-C treats this much like a standard #include <foobar.h> directive. That is incompatible with the ANSI C behavior implemented by GNU CC: to expand the name foobar as a macro. Macro expansion should eventually yield one of the two standard formats for #include:

#include "file"
#include <file>

If you have this problem, the best solution is to modify the source to convert the #include directives to one of the two standard forms. That will work with either compiler. If you want a quick and dirty fix, define the file names as macros with the proper expansion, like this:

#define stdio <stdio.h>

This will work, as long as the name doesn’t conflict with anything else in the program.

Another source of incompatibility is that VAX-C assumes that:

#include "foobar"

is actually asking for the file ‘foobar.h’. GNU CC does not make this assumption, and instead takes what you ask for literally; it tries to read the file ‘foobar’. The best way to avoid this problem is to always specify the desired file extension in your include directives.

GNU CC for VMS is distributed with a set of include files that is sufficient to compile most general purpose programs. Even though the GNU CC distribution does not contain header files to define constants and structures for some VMS system-specific functions, there is no reason why you cannot use GNU CC with any of these functions. You first may have to generate or create header files, either by using the public domain utility UNSDL (which can be found on a DECUS tape), or by extracting the relevant modules from one of the system macro libraries, and using an editor to construct a C header file.

A #include file name cannot contain a DECNET node name. The preprocessor reports an I/O error if you attempt to use a node name, whether explicitly, or implicitly via a logical name.


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7.2 Global Declarations and VMS

GNU CC does not provide the globalref, globaldef and globalvalue keywords of VAX-C. You can get the same effect with an obscure feature of GAS, the GNU assembler. (This requires GAS version 1.39 or later.) The following macros allow you to use this feature in a fairly natural way:

#ifdef __GNUC__
#define GLOBALREF(TYPE,NAME)                      \
  TYPE NAME                                       \
  asm ("_$$PsectAttributes_GLOBALSYMBOL$$" #NAME)
#define GLOBALDEF(TYPE,NAME,VALUE)                \
  TYPE NAME                                       \
  asm ("_$$PsectAttributes_GLOBALSYMBOL$$" #NAME) \
    = VALUE
#define GLOBALVALUEREF(TYPE,NAME)                 \
  const TYPE NAME[1]                              \     
  asm ("_$$PsectAttributes_GLOBALVALUE$$" #NAME)
#define GLOBALVALUEDEF(TYPE,NAME,VALUE)           \
  const TYPE NAME[1]                              \
  asm ("_$$PsectAttributes_GLOBALVALUE$$" #NAME)  \
    = {VALUE}
#else
#define GLOBALREF(TYPE,NAME) \
  globalref TYPE NAME
#define GLOBALDEF(TYPE,NAME,VALUE) \
  globaldef TYPE NAME = VALUE
#define GLOBALVALUEDEF(TYPE,NAME,VALUE) \
  globalvalue TYPE NAME = VALUE
#define GLOBALVALUEREF(TYPE,NAME) \
  globalvalue TYPE NAME
#endif

(The _$$PsectAttributes_GLOBALSYMBOL prefix at the start of the name is removed by the assembler, after it has modified the attributes of the symbol). These macros are provided in the VMS binaries distribution in a header file ‘GNU_HACKS.H’. An example of the usage is:

GLOBALREF (int, ijk);
GLOBALDEF (int, jkl, 0);

The macros GLOBALREF and GLOBALDEF cannot be used straightforwardly for arrays, since there is no way to insert the array dimension into the declaration at the right place. However, you can declare an array with these macros if you first define a typedef for the array type, like this:

typedef int intvector[10];
GLOBALREF (intvector, foo);

Array and structure initializers will also break the macros; you can define the initializer to be a macro of its own, or you can expand the GLOBALDEF macro by hand. You may find a case where you wish to use the GLOBALDEF macro with a large array, but you are not interested in explicitly initializing each element of the array. In such cases you can use an initializer like: {0,}, which will initialize the entire array to 0.

A shortcoming of this implementation is that a variable declared with GLOBALVALUEREF or GLOBALVALUEDEF is always an array. For example, the declaration:

GLOBALVALUEREF(int, ijk);

declares the variable ijk as an array of type int [1]. This is done because a globalvalue is actually a constant; its “value” is what the linker would normally consider an address. That is not how an integer value works in C, but it is how an array works. So treating the symbol as an array name gives consistent results—with the exception that the value seems to have the wrong type. Don’t try to access an element of the array. It doesn’t have any elements. The array “address” may not be the address of actual storage.

The fact that the symbol is an array may lead to warnings where the variable is used. Insert type casts to avoid the warnings. Here is an example; it takes advantage of the ANSI C feature allowing macros that expand to use the same name as the macro itself.

GLOBALVALUEREF (int, ss$_normal);
GLOBALVALUEDEF (int, xyzzy,123);
#ifdef __GNUC__
#define ss$_normal ((int) ss$_normal)
#define xyzzy ((int) xyzzy)
#endif

Don’t use globaldef or globalref with a variable whose type is an enumeration type; this is not implemented. Instead, make the variable an integer, and use a globalvaluedef for each of the enumeration values. An example of this would be:

#ifdef __GNUC__
GLOBALDEF (int, color, 0);
GLOBALVALUEDEF (int, RED, 0);
GLOBALVALUEDEF (int, BLUE, 1);
GLOBALVALUEDEF (int, GREEN, 3);
#else
enum globaldef color {RED, BLUE, GREEN = 3};
#endif

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7.3 Other VMS Issues

GNU CC automatically arranges for main to return 1 by default if you fail to specify an explicit return value. This will be interpreted by VMS as a status code indicating a normal successful completion. Version 1 of GNU CC did not provide this default.

GNU CC on VMS works only with the GNU assembler, GAS. You need version 1.37 or later of GAS in order to produce value debugging information for the VMS debugger. Use the ordinary VMS linker with the object files produced by GAS.

Under previous versions of GNU CC, the generated code would occasionally give strange results when linked to the sharable ‘VAXCRTL’ library. Now this should work.

A caveat for use of const global variables: the const modifier must be specified in every external declaration of the variable in all of the source files that use that variable. Otherwise the linker will issue warnings about conflicting attributes for the variable. Your program will still work despite the warnings, but the variable will be placed in writable storage.

Although the VMS linker does distinguish between upper and lower case letters in global symbols, most VMS compilers convert all such symbols into upper case and most run-time library routines also have upper case names. To be able to reliably call such routines, GNU CC (by means of the assembler GAS) converts global symbols into upper case like other VMS compilers. However, since the usual practice in C is to distinguish case, GNU CC (via GAS) tries to preserve usual C behavior by augmenting each name that is not all lower case. This means truncating the name to at most 23 characters and then adding more characters at the end which encode the case pattern of those 23. Names which contain at least one dollar sign are an exception; they are converted directly into upper case without augmentation.

Name augmentation yields bad results for programs that use precompiled libraries (such as Xlib) which were generated by another compiler. You can use the compiler option ‘/NOCASE_HACK’ to inhibit augmentation; it makes external C functions and variables case-independent as is usual on VMS. Alternatively, you could write all references to the functions and variables in such libraries using lower case; this will work on VMS, but is not portable to other systems. The compiler option ‘/NAMES’ also provides control over global name handling.

Function and variable names are handled somewhat differently with GNU C++. The GNU C++ compiler performs name mangling on function names, which means that it adds information to the function name to describe the data types of the arguments that the function takes. One result of this is that the name of a function can become very long. Since the VMS linker only recognizes the first 31 characters in a name, special action is taken to ensure that each function and variable has a unique name that can be represented in 31 characters.

If the name (plus a name augmentation, if required) is less than 32 characters in length, then no special action is performed. If the name is longer than 31 characters, the assembler (GAS) will generate a hash string based upon the function name, truncate the function name to 23 characters, and append the hash string to the truncated name. If the ‘/VERBOSE’ compiler option is used, the assembler will print both the full and truncated names of each symbol that is truncated.

The ‘/NOCASE_HACK’ compiler option should not be used when you are compiling programs that use libg++. libg++ has several instances of objects (i.e. Filebuf and filebuf) which become indistinguishable in a case-insensitive environment. This leads to cases where you need to inhibit augmentation selectively (if you were using libg++ and Xlib in the same program, for example). There is no special feature for doing this, but you can get the result by defining a macro for each mixed case symbol for which you wish to inhibit augmentation. The macro should expand into the lower case equivalent of itself. For example:

#define StuDlyCapS studlycaps

These macro definitions can be placed in a header file to minimize the number of changes to your source code.


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8 GNU CC and Portability

The main goal of GNU CC was to make a good, fast compiler for machines in the class that the GNU system aims to run on: 32-bit machines that address 8-bit bytes and have several general registers. Elegance, theoretical power and simplicity are only secondary.

GNU CC gets most of the information about the target machine from a machine description which gives an algebraic formula for each of the machine’s instructions. This is a very clean way to describe the target. But when the compiler needs information that is difficult to express in this fashion, I have not hesitated to define an ad-hoc parameter to the machine description. The purpose of portability is to reduce the total work needed on the compiler; it was not of interest for its own sake.

GNU CC does not contain machine dependent code, but it does contain code that depends on machine parameters such as endianness (whether the most significant byte has the highest or lowest address of the bytes in a word) and the availability of autoincrement addressing. In the RTL-generation pass, it is often necessary to have multiple strategies for generating code for a particular kind of syntax tree, strategies that are usable for different combinations of parameters. Often I have not tried to address all possible cases, but only the common ones or only the ones that I have encountered. As a result, a new target may require additional strategies. You will know if this happens because the compiler will call abort. Fortunately, the new strategies can be added in a machine-independent fashion, and will affect only the target machines that need them.


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9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output

GNU CC is normally configured to use the same function calling convention normally in use on the target system. This is done with the machine-description macros described (@pxref{Target Macros}).

However, returning of structure and union values is done differently on some target machines. As a result, functions compiled with PCC returning such types cannot be called from code compiled with GNU CC, and vice versa. This does not cause trouble often because few Unix library routines return structures or unions.

GNU CC code returns structures and unions that are 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes long in the same registers used for int or double return values. (GNU CC typically allocates variables of such types in registers also.) Structures and unions of other sizes are returned by storing them into an address passed by the caller (usually in a register). The machine-description macros STRUCT_VALUE and STRUCT_INCOMING_VALUE tell GNU CC where to pass this address.

By contrast, PCC on most target machines returns structures and unions of any size by copying the data into an area of static storage, and then returning the address of that storage as if it were a pointer value. The caller must copy the data from that memory area to the place where the value is wanted. This is slower than the method used by GNU CC, and fails to be reentrant.

On some target machines, such as RISC machines and the 80386, the standard system convention is to pass to the subroutine the address of where to return the value. On these machines, GNU CC has been configured to be compatible with the standard compiler, when this method is used. It may not be compatible for structures of 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes.

GNU CC uses the system’s standard convention for passing arguments. On some machines, the first few arguments are passed in registers; in others, all are passed on the stack. It would be possible to use registers for argument passing on any machine, and this would probably result in a significant speedup. But the result would be complete incompatibility with code that follows the standard convention. So this change is practical only if you are switching to GNU CC as the sole C compiler for the system. We may implement register argument passing on certain machines once we have a complete GNU system so that we can compile the libraries with GNU CC.

On some machines (particularly the Sparc), certain types of arguments are passed “by invisible reference”. This means that the value is stored in memory, and the address of the memory location is passed to the subroutine.

If you use longjmp, beware of automatic variables. ANSI C says that automatic variables that are not declared volatile have undefined values after a longjmp. And this is all GNU CC promises to do, because it is very difficult to restore register variables correctly, and one of GNU CC’s features is that it can put variables in registers without your asking it to.

If you want a variable to be unaltered by longjmp, and you don’t want to write volatile because old C compilers don’t accept it, just take the address of the variable. If a variable’s address is ever taken, even if just to compute it and ignore it, then the variable cannot go in a register:

{
  int careful;
  &careful;
  …
}

Code compiled with GNU CC may call certain library routines. Most of them handle arithmetic for which there are no instructions. This includes multiply and divide on some machines, and floating point operations on any machine for which floating point support is disabled with ‘-msoft-float’. Some standard parts of the C library, such as bcopy or memcpy, are also called automatically. The usual function call interface is used for calling the library routines.

These library routines should be defined in the library ‘libgcc.a’, which GNU CC automatically searches whenever it links a program. On machines that have multiply and divide instructions, if hardware floating point is in use, normally ‘libgcc.a’ is not needed, but it is searched just in case.

Each arithmetic function is defined in ‘libgcc1.c’ to use the corresponding C arithmetic operator. As long as the file is compiled with another C compiler, which supports all the C arithmetic operators, this file will work portably. However, ‘libgcc1.c’ does not work if compiled with GNU CC, because each arithmetic function would compile into a call to itself!


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10 Passes and Files of the Compiler

The overall control structure of the compiler is in ‘toplev.c’. This file is responsible for initialization, decoding arguments, opening and closing files, and sequencing the passes.

The parsing pass is invoked only once, to parse the entire input. The RTL intermediate code for a function is generated as the function is parsed, a statement at a time. Each statement is read in as a syntax tree and then converted to RTL; then the storage for the tree for the statement is reclaimed. Storage for types (and the expressions for their sizes), declarations, and a representation of the binding contours and how they nest, remain until the function is finished being compiled; these are all needed to output the debugging information.

Each time the parsing pass reads a complete function definition or top-level declaration, it calls either the function rest_of_compilation, or the function rest_of_decl_compilation in ‘toplev.c’, which are responsible for all further processing necessary, ending with output of the assembler language. All other compiler passes run, in sequence, within rest_of_compilation. When that function returns from compiling a function definition, the storage used for that function definition’s compilation is entirely freed, unless it is an inline function (@pxref{Inline,,An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro}).

Here is a list of all the passes of the compiler and their source files. Also included is a description of where debugging dumps can be requested with ‘-d’ options.

Some additional files are used by all or many passes:


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11 The Configuration File

The configuration file ‘xm-machine.h’ contains macro definitions that describe the machine and system on which the compiler is running, unlike the definitions in ‘machine.h’, which describe the machine for which the compiler is producing output. Most of the values in ‘xm-machine.h’ are actually the same on all machines that GNU CC runs on, so large parts of all configuration files are identical. But there are some macros that vary:

USG

Define this macro if the host system is System V.

VMS

Define this macro if the host system is VMS.

FATAL_EXIT_CODE

A C expression for the status code to be returned when the compiler exits after serious errors.

SUCCESS_EXIT_CODE

A C expression for the status code to be returned when the compiler exits without serious errors.

HOST_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN

Defined if the host machine stores words of multi-word values in big-endian order. (GNU CC does not depend on the host byte ordering within a word.)

HOST_FLOAT_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN

Define this macro to be 1 if the host machine stores DFmode, XFmode or TFmode floating point numbers in memory with the word containing the sign bit at the lowest address; otherwise, define it to be zero.

This macro need not be defined if the ordering is the same as for multi-word integers.

HOST_FLOAT_FORMAT

A numeric code distinguishing the floating point format for the host machine. See TARGET_FLOAT_FORMAT in @ref{Storage Layout} for the alternatives and default.

HOST_BITS_PER_CHAR

A C expression for the number of bits in char on the host machine.

HOST_BITS_PER_SHORT

A C expression for the number of bits in short on the host machine.

HOST_BITS_PER_INT

A C expression for the number of bits in int on the host machine.

HOST_BITS_PER_LONG

A C expression for the number of bits in long on the host machine.

ONLY_INT_FIELDS

Define this macro to indicate that the host compiler only supports int bit fields, rather than other integral types, including enum, as do most C compilers.

OBSTACK_CHUNK_SIZE

A C expression for the size of ordinary obstack chunks. If you don’t define this, a usually-reasonable default is used.

OBSTACK_CHUNK_ALLOC

The function used to allocate obstack chunks. If you don’t define this, xmalloc is used.

OBSTACK_CHUNK_FREE

The function used to free obstack chunks. If you don’t define this, free is used.

USE_C_ALLOCA

Define this macro to indicate that the compiler is running with the alloca implemented in C. This version of alloca can be found in the file ‘alloca.c’; to use it, you must also alter the ‘Makefile’ variable ALLOCA. (This is done automatically for the systems on which we know it is needed.)

If you do define this macro, you should probably do it as follows:

#ifndef __GNUC__
#define USE_C_ALLOCA
#else
#define alloca __builtin_alloca
#endif

so that when the compiler is compiled with GNU CC it uses the more efficient built-in alloca function.

FUNCTION_CONVERSION_BUG

Define this macro to indicate that the host compiler does not properly handle converting a function value to a pointer-to-function when it is used in an expression.

HAVE_VPRINTF

Define this if the library function vprintf is available on your system.

MULTIBYTE_CHARS

Define this macro to enable support for multibyte characters in the input to GNU CC. This requires that the host system support the ANSI C library functions for converting multibyte characters to wide characters.

HAVE_PUTENV

Define this if the library function putenv is available on your system.

POSIX

Define this if your system is POSIX.1 compliant.

NO_SYS_SIGLIST

Define this if your system does not provide the variable sys_siglist.

DONT_DECLARE_SYS_SIGLIST

Define this if your system has the variable sys_siglist, and there is already a declaration of it in the system header files.

USE_PROTOTYPES

Define this to be 1 if you know that the host compiler supports prototypes, even if it doesn’t define __STDC__, or define it to be 0 if you do not want any prototypes used in compiling GNU CC. If ‘USE_PROTOTYPES’ is not defined, it will be determined automatically whether your compiler supports prototypes by checking if ‘__STDC__’ is defined.

NO_MD_PROTOTYPES

Define this if you wish suppression of prototypes generated from the machine description file, but to use other prototypes within GNU CC. If ‘USE_PROTOTYPES’ is defined to be 0, or the host compiler does not support prototypes, this macro has no effect.

MD_CALL_PROTOTYPES

Define this if you wish to generate prototypes for the gen_call or gen_call_value functions generated from the machine description file. If ‘USE_PROTOTYPES’ is defined to be 0, or the host compiler does not support prototypes, or ‘NO_MD_PROTOTYPES’ is defined, this macro has no effect. As soon as all of the machine descriptions are modified to have the appropriate number of arguments, this macro will be removed.

Some systems do provide this variable, but with a different name such as _sys_siglist. On these systems, you can define sys_siglist as a macro which expands into the name actually provided.

NO_STAB_H

Define this if your system does not have the include file ‘stab.h’. If ‘USG’ is defined, ‘NO_STAB_H’ is assumed.

PATH_SEPARATOR

Define this macro to be a C character constant representing the character used to separate components in paths. The default value is. the colon character

DIR_SEPARATOR

If your system uses some character other than slash to separate directory names within a file specification, define this macro to be a C character constant specifying that character. When GNU CC displays file names, the character you specify will be used. GNU CC will test for both slash and the character you specify when parsing filenames.

OBJECT_SUFFIX

Define this macro to be a C string representing the suffix for object files on your machine. If you do not define this macro, GNU CC will use ‘.o’ as the suffix for object files.

EXECUTABLE_SUFFIX

Define this macro to be a C string representing the suffix for executable files on your machine. If you do not define this macro, GNU CC will use the null string as the suffix for object files.

COLLECT_EXPORT_LIST

If defined, collect2 will scan the individual object files specified on its command line and create an export list for the linker. Define this macro for systems like AIX, where the linker discards object files that are not referenced from main and uses export lists.

In addition, configuration files for system V define bcopy, bzero and bcmp as aliases. Some files define alloca as a macro when compiled with GNU CC, in order to take advantage of the benefit of GNU CC’s built-in alloca.


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Index Entry  Section

 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC

A
abort 8 GNU CC and Portability
Alliant 4.4 Interoperation
analysis, data flow 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
apostrophes 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
argument passing 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
arithmetic libraries 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
arithmetic simplifications 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
assembly code, invalid 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
autoincrement addressing, availability 8 GNU CC and Portability
autoincrement/decrement analysis 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler

B
backtrace for bug reports 5.3 How to Report Bugs
basic blocks 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
bcmp 11 The Configuration File
bug criteria 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
bug report mailing lists 5.2 Where to Report Bugs
bugs 5 Reporting Bugs
bugs, known 4 Known Causes of Trouble with GNU CC
bzero 11 The Configuration File

C
C intermediate output, nonexistent 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
C++ 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
C++ misunderstandings 4.10 Common Misunderstandings with GNU C++
C++ static data, declaring and defining 4.10.1 Declare and Define Static Members
case sensitivity and VMS 7.3 Other VMS Issues
code motion 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
COLLECT_EXPORT_LIST 11 The Configuration File
common subexpression elimination 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
compiler bugs, reporting 5.3 How to Report Bugs
compiler compared to C++ preprocessor 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
compiler passes and files 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
configuration file 11 The Configuration File
conflicting types 4.9 Disappointments and Misunderstandings
constant folding 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
constant propagation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
contributors Contributors to GNU CC
conventions, run-time 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
core dump 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
cross-jumping 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler

D
data flow analysis 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
DBX 4.4 Interoperation
dead code 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
debugging information generation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
debug_rtx 5.3 How to Report Bugs
declaration scope 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
declaring static data in C++ 4.10.1 Declare and Define Static Members
defining static data in C++ 4.10.1 Declare and Define Static Members
delayed branch scheduling 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
DIR_SEPARATOR 11 The Configuration File
DONT_DECLARE_SYS_SIGLIST 11 The Configuration File

E
endianness 8 GNU CC and Portability
error messages 4.13 Warning Messages and Error Messages
EXECUTABLE_SUFFIX 11 The Configuration File
exit status and VMS 7.3 Other VMS Issues
external declaration scope 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC

F
fatal signal 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
FATAL_EXIT_CODE 11 The Configuration File
files and passes of the compiler 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
final pass 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
float as function value type 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
fscanf, and constant strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
function call conventions 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
FUNCTION_CONVERSION_BUG 11 The Configuration File

G
G++ 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
GCC 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
gencodes 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
genconfig 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
genflags 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
genflags, crash on Sun 4 4.2 Installation Problems
global register allocation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
GLOBALDEF 7.2 Global Declarations and VMS
GLOBALREF 7.2 Global Declarations and VMS
GLOBALVALUEDEF 7.2 Global Declarations and VMS
GLOBALVALUEREF 7.2 Global Declarations and VMS
GNU CC and portability 8 GNU CC and Portability

H
HAVE_PUTENV 11 The Configuration File
HAVE_VPRINTF 11 The Configuration File
header files and VMS 7.1 Include Files and VMS
HOST_BITS_PER_CHAR 11 The Configuration File
HOST_BITS_PER_INT 11 The Configuration File
HOST_BITS_PER_LONG 11 The Configuration File
HOST_BITS_PER_SHORT 11 The Configuration File
HOST_FLOAT_FORMAT 11 The Configuration File
HOST_FLOAT_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN 11 The Configuration File
HOST_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN 11 The Configuration File

I
IBM RT PC 4.4 Interoperation
include files and VMS 7.1 Include Files and VMS
incompatibilities of GNU CC 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
increment operators 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
inline, automatic 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
installation trouble 4 Known Causes of Trouble with GNU CC
instruction combination 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
instruction recognizer 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
instruction scheduling 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
instruction scheduling 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
interfacing to GNU CC output 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
intermediate C version, nonexistent 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
invalid assembly code 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
invalid input 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?

J
jump optimization 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
jump threading 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler

K
known causes of trouble 4 Known Causes of Trouble with GNU CC

L
local register allocation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
longjmp and automatic variables 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
longjmp incompatibilities 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
loop optimization 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler

M
main and the exit status 7.3 Other VMS Issues
math libraries 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
MD_CALL_PROTOTYPES 11 The Configuration File
messages, warning and error 4.13 Warning Messages and Error Messages
misunderstandings in C++ 4.10 Common Misunderstandings with GNU C++
mktemp, and constant strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
MULTIBYTE_CHARS 11 The Configuration File

N
name augmentation 7.3 Other VMS Issues
no-op move instructions 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
NO_MD_PROTOTYPES 11 The Configuration File
NO_STAB_H 11 The Configuration File
NO_SYS_SIGLIST 11 The Configuration File

O
Objective C 3 Compile C, C++, or Objective C
OBJECT_SUFFIX 11 The Configuration File
OBSTACK_CHUNK_ALLOC 11 The Configuration File
OBSTACK_CHUNK_FREE 11 The Configuration File
OBSTACK_CHUNK_SIZE 11 The Configuration File
ONLY_INT_FIELDS 11 The Configuration File
order of evaluation, side effects 4.12 Certain Changes We Don’t Want to Make

P
parsing pass 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
passes and files of the compiler 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
passing arguments 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
PATH_SEPARATOR 11 The Configuration File
peephole optimization 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
portability 8 GNU CC and Portability
portions of temporary objects, pointers to 4.10.2 Temporaries May Vanish Before You Expect
POSIX 11 The Configuration File
preprocessing numbers 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
preprocessing tokens 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
putenv 11 The Configuration File

R
read-only strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
register allocation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
register allocation, stupid 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
register class preference pass 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
register use analysis 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
register-to-stack conversion 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
reloading 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
reporting bugs 5 Reporting Bugs
rest_of_compilation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
rest_of_decl_compilation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
return value of main 7.3 Other VMS Issues
returning structures and unions 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
RT PC 4.4 Interoperation
RTL generation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
run-time conventions 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output

S
scanf, and constant strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
scheduling, delayed branch 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
scheduling, instruction 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
scheduling, instruction 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
scope of declaration 4.9 Disappointments and Misunderstandings
scope of external declarations 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
setjmp incompatibilities 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
shared strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
shared VMS run time system 7.3 Other VMS Issues
side effects, order of evaluation 4.12 Certain Changes We Don’t Want to Make
simplifications, arithmetic 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
sscanf, and constant strings 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
static data in C++, declaring and defining 4.10.1 Declare and Define Static Members
strength-reduction 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
string constants 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
structures 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
structures, returning 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
stupid register allocation 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
SUCCESS_EXIT_CODE 11 The Configuration File
surprises in C++ 4.10 Common Misunderstandings with GNU C++
sys_siglist 11 The Configuration File

T
tail recursion optimization 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
target-parameter-dependent code 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
temporaries, lifetime of 4.10.2 Temporaries May Vanish Before You Expect
top level of compiler 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
typedef names as function parameters 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC

U
Ultrix calling convention 4.4 Interoperation
undefined behavior 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
undefined function value 5.1 Have You Found a Bug?
unions 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC
unions, returning 9 Interfacing to GNU CC Output
unreachable code 10 Passes and Files of the Compiler
USE_C_ALLOCA 11 The Configuration File
USE_PROTOTYPES 11 The Configuration File
USG 11 The Configuration File

V
Vax calling convention 4.4 Interoperation
VAXCRTL 7.3 Other VMS Issues
VMS 11 The Configuration File
VMS and case sensitivity 7.3 Other VMS Issues
VMS and include files 7.1 Include Files and VMS
vprintf 11 The Configuration File

W
warnings vs errors 4.13 Warning Messages and Error Messages
whitespace 4.6 Incompatibilities of GNU CC

X
xm-machine.h 11 The Configuration File

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