Hi,

I am new to using LINUX and am only dabbling to learn more.i have been trying to understand the working of gcc.However, I am finding it rather tough to understand it.I want to know if there is any way in which I can debug the gcc source files themselves and come to know of the flows in the compilation of a particular program.What i mean is when i compile any program, would it be possible to debug all the gcc source code that effectively execute to compile my program.If there is a way,Please be a little bit elaborate in the way to do that coz I am really new to this.

Thanks in advance,
Bye
--sandy

gcc is a compiler it pretty much does whatever its told to do. When you compile a program normally you use make which will call gcc with different options to enable either building libraries or executable. As far as what programs that gcc uses its dependent on what type of source file you are attempting to compile. Gcc can compile alot of different languages. First place you may wanna start is the gcc webpage or maybe the man page.

Sounds like you want to run gcc under a debugger and step though each line as gcc runs. Ouch, not my I idea of fun.

If you really want to do this you can, install gcc with debug symbols (perhaps your distro has it, or maybe you can compile it), install gdb (gnu debuger), write an "Hello, world!" program (start with c), set a break point at the first line of main() in gcc, and step through the compilation of helloworld.c

hmm, that was a long sentence.

Better still, just read the source of gcc. It shouldn't take too long ;-)

Cheers,

Evo2.

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GCC is extremely complex by all means. If your new to Linux, UNIX or debugging in general, then please look for a much simpler target. If it has to be a compiler that you want to investigate, then rather start with some textbooks on compiler-building, or get some other opensource compiler (maybe some BASIC or Pascal compiler) to find out it's inner workings. Starting with GCC will probably lead to nowhere.

Thats exactly What I want

I have gcc installed(by that I mean the one that gets installed automatically when fedora is installed).And I have also got gdb installed.
However, even if I write a helloworld.c How would I be able to step into gcc's code?


I think you are right.But I face a problem with this.Its hard to understand the source reading any random file from the gcc source coz there are too many dependencies of other files involved.And if i type in

gcc helloworld.c

i dont know which will be the first file that will be invoked in gcc.so where do i start reading and understanding the source from?