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++, Objective-C, Java, Fortran and Ada. It is now referred to as "
GNU Compiler Collection". The mother site for GCC is
http://gcc.gnu.org/.
GCC is a key component of "GNU Toolchain", for developing applications, as well as operating systems. The GNU Toolchain includes:
- GNU Compiler Collection (GCC): a compiler suit that supports many languages, such as C/C++, Objective-C and Java.
- GNU Make: an automation tool for compiling and building applications.
- GNU Binutils: a suit 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 MinGW and Cygwin. GCC is also a cross-compiler, for producing executables on different platform.
The various GCC versions are:
- In 1987, the first version of GCC was released.
- In 1992, GCC version 2 was released which supports C++.
- In 2001, GCC version 3 was released incorporating ECGS (Experimental GNU Compiler System), with improve optimization.
- In 2005, GCC version 4 was released. As of July 2012, the latest release of GCC is 4.7.4.
1 Installing GCC
