Okay, a few basics about compilation.
The steps for compiling a C language project are these:
1. Compile the C source code (.c files) into relocatable object binary files (.o files).
2. Link these relocatable object binary files together to give an executable.
The line I gave you was the second stage (from the makefile). The reason that the junk lines have no effect is that it is using the object file you already had from earlier (ie, it is not recompiling the source code, merely linking the object files together).
You can sometimes do both steps in one just by running gcc on the source file. However, this only works if the source file contains the entire codebase for the project (which is not true in this case).
The other important concept is the makefile.
Make is a program to automate the compilation process, by checking files that have changed and recompiling/linking as appropriate. It uses an instruction file called the 'makefile'.
The sim-profile program you are building is a complex one, consisting of many source files. So it already has a makefile. You build the program by running the make command, as detailed in the instructions you were given:
Code:
Building the simulators
Un-pack the simulator package.
$ cd $IDIR
$ tar xvfz simplesim-3v0d-with-cheetah.tar.gz
$ cd simplesim-3.0
$ make config-pisa
$ make
This make command will run the many gcc commands that are required to build the executables.
Just follow the steps in the
installation instructions. Most of this is not Linux specific, it would be the same working with C programs on any platform.
When you come to trying out the sslittle-na-sstrix-gcc compiler, you are testing it on a small C program (eg the hello world that is in the instructions). If you want to try it on more complex programs (with multiple source files), you will need to understand the two stages of the compilation process.