GCC(1)

NAME
gcc - GNU project C and C++ compiler

SYNOPSIS
gcc [-c|-S|-E] [-std=standard]
    [-g] [-pg] [-Olevel]
    [-Wwarn...] [-pedantic]
    [-Idir...] [-Ldir...]
    [-Dmacro[=defn]...] [-Umacro]
    [-foption...] [-mmachine-option...]
    [-o outfile] [@file] infile...

Only the most useful options are listed here; see below for the remainder. g++ accepts mostly the same options as gcc.

In Apple's version of GCC, both cc and gcc are actually symbolic links to a compiler named like gcc-version. Similarly, c++ and g++ are links to a compiler named like g++-version.

Note that Apple's GCC includes a number of extensions to standard GCC (flagged below with "APPLE ONLY"), and that not all generic GCC options are available or supported on Darwin / Mac OS X. In particular, Apple does not currently support the compilation of Fortran, Ada, or Java, although there are third parties who have made these work.

DESCRIPTION
When you invoke GCC, it normally does preprocessing, compilation, assembly and linking. The "overall options" allow you to stop this process at an intermediate stage. For example, the -c option says not to run the linker. Then the output consists of object files output by the assembler.

Other options are passed on to one stage of processing. Some options control the preprocessor and others the compiler itself. Yet other options control the assembler and linker; most of these are not documented here, since you rarely need to use any of them.

Most of the command line options that you can use with GCC are useful for C programs; when an option is only useful with another language (usually C++), the explanation says so explicitly. If the description for a particular option does not mention a source language, you can use that option with all supported languages.

The gcc program accepts options and file names as operands. Many options have multi-letter names; therefore multiple single-letter options may not be grouped: -dr is very different from -d -r.

You can mix options and other arguments. For the most part, the order you use doesn't matter. Order does matter when you use several options of the same kind; for example, if you specify -L more than once, the directories are searched in the order specified.

Many options have long names starting with -f or with -W---for example, -fmove-loop-invariants, -Wformat and so on. Most of these have both positive and negative forms; the negative form of -ffoo would be -fno-foo. This manual documents only one of these two forms, whichever one is not the default.

OPTIONS

  Option Summary
Here is a summary of all the options, grouped by type. Explanations are in the following sections.

Overall Options
    -c -S -E -o file -combine -no-canonical-prefixes -pipe -pass-exit-codes -ObjC (APPLE ONLY) -ObjC++ (APPLE ONLY) -arch arch (APPLE ONLY) -Xarch_arch option (APPLE ONLY) -fsave-repository=file -x language -v -### --help --target-help --version @file

C Language Options
    -ansi -std=standard -fgnu89-inline -aux-info filename -faltivec (APPLE ONLY) -fasm-blocks (APPLE ONLY) -fno-asm -fno-blocks -fno-builtin -fno-builtin-function -fhosted -ffreestanding -fopenmp -fms-extensions -trigraphs -no-integrated-cpp -traditional -traditional-cpp -fallow-single-precision -fcond-mismatch -flax-vector-conversions -fconstant-cfstrings (APPLE ONLY) -fnon-lvalue-assign (APPLE ONLY) -fno-nested-functions -fpch-preprocess (APPLE ONLY) -fsigned-bitfields -fsigned-char -Wno-#warnings (APPLE ONLY) -Wextra-tokens (APPLE ONLY) -Wnewline-eof (APPLE ONLY) -Wno-altivec-long-deprecated (APPLE ONLY) -fglobal-alloc-prefer-bytes (APPLE ONLY) -fno-global-alloc-prefer-bytes (APPLE ONLY) -funsigned-bitfields -funsigned-char -fwritable-strings

C++ Language Options
    -fabi-version=n -fno-access-control -fcheck-new -fconserve-space -ffriend-injection -fno-elide-constructors -fno-enforce-eh-specs -ffor-scope -fno-for-scope -fno-gnu-keywords -fno-implicit-templates -fno-implicit-inline-templates -fno-implement-inlines -fms-extensions -fno-nonansi-builtins -fno-operator-names -fno-optional-diags -fpermissive -frepo -fno-rtti -fstats -ftemplate-depth-n -fno-threadsafe-statics -fuse-cxa-atexit -fno-weak -nostdinc++ -fno-default-inline -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -fvisibility-ms-compat -Wabi -Wctor-dtor-privacy -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wreorder -Weffc++ -Wno-deprecated -Wstrict-null-sentinel -Wno-non-template-friend -Wold-style-cast -Woverloaded-virtual -Wno-pmf-conversions -Wsign-promo

Objective-C and Objective-C++ Language Options
    -fconstant-string-class=class-name -fgnu-runtime -fnext-runtime -fno-nil-receivers -fobjc-call-cxx-cdtors -fobjc-direct-dispatch -fobjc-sjlj-exceptions -fobjc-gc -freplace-objc-classes -fzero-link -gen-decls -Wassign-intercept -Wno-protocol -Wselector -Wno-property-assign-default -Wstrict-selector-match -Wundeclared-selector

Language Independent Options
    -fmessage-length=n -fdiagnostics-show-location=[once|every-line] -fdiagnostics-show-option

Warning Options
    -fsyntax-only -pedantic -pedantic-errors -w -Wextra -Wall -Waddress -Waggregate-return -Wno-attributes -Wc++-compat -Wcast-align -Wcast-qual -Wchar-subscripts -Wcomment -Wconversion -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wdisabled-optimization -Wno-div-by-zero -Wno-endif-labels -Werror -Werror=* -Werror-implicit-function-declaration -Wfatal-errors -Wfloat-equal -Wno-format -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-extra-args -Wformat-nonliteral -Wno-format-security -Wformat-y2k -Wglobal-constructors -Wimplicit -Wimplicit-function-declaration -Wimplicit-int -Wimport -Wno-import -Winit-self -Winline -Wno-int-to-pointer-cast -Wno-invalid-offsetof -Winvalid-pch -Wlarger-than-len -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations -Wlong-long -Wmain -Wmissing-braces -Wmissing-field-initializers -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmost (APPLE ONLY) -Wno-multichar -Wnonnull -Wno-overflow -Woverlength-strings -Wpacked -Wpadded -Wparentheses -Wpointer-arith -Wno-pointer-to-int-cast -Wredundant-decls -Wreturn-type -Wsequence-point -Wshadow -Wsign-compare -Wstack-protector -Wstrict-aliasing -Wstrict-aliasing=2 -Wstrict-overflow -Wstrict-overflow=n -Wswitch -Wswitch-default -Wswitch-enum -Wsystem-headers -Wtrigraphs -Wundef -Wuninitialized -Wunknown-pragmas -Wno-pragmas -Wunreachable-code -Wunused -Wunused-function -Wunused-label -Wunused-parameter -Wunused-value -Wunused-variable -Wvariadic-macros -Wvolatile-register-var -Wwrite-strings

C-only Warning Options
    -Wbad-function-cast -Wmissing-declarations -Wnested-externs -Wold-style-definition -Wstrict-prototypes -Wtraditional -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-discard-qual -Wno-pointer-sign

Debugging Options
    -dletters -dumpspecs -dumpmachine -dumpversion -fdump-noaddr -fdump-unnumbered -fdump-translation-unit[-n] -fdump-class-hierarchy[-n] -fdump-ipa-all -fdump-ipa-cgraph -fdump-tree-all -fdump-tree-original[-n] -fdump-tree-optimized[-n] -fdump-tree-inlined[-n] -fdump-tree-cfg -fdump-tree-vcg -fdump-tree-alias -fdump-tree-ch -fdump-tree-ssa[-n] -fdump-tree-pre[-n] -fdump-tree-ccp[-n] -fdump-tree-dce[-n] -fdump-tree-gimple[-raw] -fdump-tree-mudflap[-n] -fdump-tree-dom[-n] -fdump-tree-dse[-n] -fdump-tree-phiopt[-n] -fdump-tree-forwprop[-n] -fdump-tree-copyrename[-n] -fdump-tree-nrv -fdump-tree-vect -fdump-tree-sink -fdump-tree-sra[-n] -fdump-tree-salias -fdump-tree-fre[-n] -fdump-tree-vrp[-n] -ftree-vectorizer-verbose=n -fdump-tree-storeccp[-n] -flimit-debug-info -feliminate-dwarf2-dups -feliminate-unused-debug-types -feliminate-unused-debug-symbols -femit-class-debug-always -fmem-report -fopt-diary -fprofile-arcs -frandom-seed=string -fsched-verbose=n -ftest-coverage -ftime-report -fvar-tracking -g -glevel -gcoff -gdwarf-2 -ggdb -gstabs -gstabs+ -gvms -gxcoff -gxcoff+ -p -pg -print-file-name=library -print-libgcc-file-name -print-multi-directory -print-multi-lib -print-prog-name=program -print-search-dirs -Q -mllvm string -save-temps -time

Optimization Options
    -falign-functions=n -falign-jumps=n -falign-labels=n -falign-loops=n -falign-loops-max-skip=n -falign-jumps-max-skip=n -fbounds-check -fmudflap -fmudflapth -fmudflapir -fbranch-probabilities -fprofile-values -fvpt -fbranch-target-load-optimize -fbranch-target-load-optimize2 -fbtr-bb-exclusive -fcaller-saves -fcprop-registers -fcreate-profile -fcse-follow-jumps -fcse-skip-blocks -fcx-limited-range -fdata-sections -fdelayed-branch -fdelete-null-pointer-checks -fearly-inlining -fexpensive-optimizations -ffast-math -ffloat-store -fforce-addr -ffunction-sections -fgcse -fgcse-lm -fgcse-sm -fgcse-las -fgcse-after-reload -fcrossjumping -fif-conversion -fif-conversion2 -finline-functions -finline-functions-called-once -finline-limit=n -fkeep-inline-functions -fkeep-static-consts -flocal-alloc (APPLE ONLY) -fmerge-constants -fmerge-all-constants -fmodulo-sched -fno-branch-count-reg -fno-default-inline -fno-defer-pop -fmove-loop-invariants -fno-function-cse -fno-guess-branch-probability -fno-inline -fno-math-errno -fno-peephole -fno-peephole2 -funsafe-math-optimizations -funsafe-loop-optimizations -ffinite-math-only -fno-toplevel-reorder -fno-trapping-math -fno-zero-initialized-in-bss -mstackrealign -fomit-frame-pointer -foptimize-register-move -foptimize-sibling-calls -fprefetch-loop-arrays -fprofile-generate -fprofile-use -fregmove -frename-registers -freorder-blocks -freorder-blocks-and-partition -freorder-functions -frerun-cse-after-loop -frounding-math -frtl-abstract-sequences -fschedule-insns -fschedule-insns2 -fno-sched-interblock -fno-sched-spec -fsched-spec-load -fsched-spec-load-dangerous -fsched-stalled-insns=n -fsched-stalled-insns-dep=n -fsched2-use-superblocks -fsched2-use-traces -fsee -freschedule-modulo-scheduled-loops -fsection-anchors -fsignaling-nans -fsingle-precision-constant -fstack-protector -fstack-protector-all -fstrict-aliasing -fstrict-overflow -ftracer -fthread-jumps -funroll-all-loops -funroll-loops -fpeel-loops -fsplit-ivs-in-unroller -funswitch-loops -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller -ftree-pre -ftree-ccp -ftree-dce -ftree-loop-optimize -ftree-loop-linear -ftree-loop-im -ftree-loop-ivcanon -fivopts -ftree-dominator-opts -ftree-dse -ftree-copyrename -ftree-sink -ftree-ch -ftree-sra -ftree-ter -ftree-lrs -ftree-fre -ftree-vectorize -ftree-vect-loop-version -ftree-salias -fuse-profile -fipa-pta -fweb -ftree-copy-prop -ftree-store-ccp -ftree-store-copy-prop -fwhole-program --param name=value -flto (APPLE ONLY) -O -O0 -O1 -O2 -O3 -O4 (APPLE ONLY) -Os -Oz (APPLE ONLY) -fast (APPLE ONLY)

Preprocessor Options
    -Aquestion=answer -A-question[=answer] -C -dD -dI -dM -dN -Dmacro[=defn] -E -H -idirafter dir -include file -imacros file -iprefix file -iwithprefix dir -iwithprefixbefore dir -isystem dir -imultilib dir -isysroot dir -iwithsysroot (APPLE ONLY) dir -M -MM -MF -MG -MP -MQ -MT -nostdinc -P -fworking-directory -remap -trigraphs -undef -Umacro -Wp,option -Xpreprocessor option

Assembler Option
    -Wa,option -Xassembler option

Linker Options
    object-file-name -llibrary -nostartfiles -nodefaultlibs -nostdlib -pie -rdynamic -s -static -static-libgcc -shared -shared-libgcc -symbolic -Wl,option -Xlinker option -u symbol

Directory Options
    -Bprefix -Idir -iquotedir -Ldir -specs=file -I- --sysroot=dir

Target Options
    -V version -b machine

Machine Dependent Options
    ARM Options -mapcs-frame -mno-apcs-frame -mabi=name -mapcs-stack-check -mno-apcs-stack-check -mapcs-float -mno-apcs-float -mapcs-reentrant -mno-apcs-reentrant -msched-prolog -mno-sched-prolog -mlittle-endian -mbig-endian -mwords-little-endian -mfloat-abi=name -msoft-float -mhard-float -mfpe -mthumb-interwork -mno-thumb-interwork -mcpu=name -march=name -mfpu=name -mstructure-size-boundary=n -mabort-on-noreturn -mlong-calls -mno-long-calls -msingle-pic-base -mno-single-pic-base -mpic-register=reg -mnop-fun-dllimport -mcirrus-fix-invalid-insns -mno-cirrus-fix-invalid-insns -mpoke-function-name -mthumb -marm -mtpcs-frame -mtpcs-leaf-frame -mcaller-super-interworking -mcallee-super-interworking -mtp=name -mms-bitfields -mno-ms-bitfields

    CRX Options -mmac -mpush-args

    Darwin Options -all_load -allowable_client -arch -arch_errors_fatal -arch_only -bind_at_load -bundle -bundle_loader -client_name -compatibility_version -current_version -dead_strip -dependency-file -dylib_file -dylinker_install_name -dynamic -dynamiclib -exported_symbols_list -filelist -flat_namespace -force_cpusubtype_ALL -force_flat_namespace -force_load -headerpad_max_install_names -iframework -image_base -init -install_name -keep_private_externs -multi_module -multiply_defined -multiply_defined_unused -noall_load -no_dead_strip_inits_and_terms -nofixprebinding -nomultidefs -noprebind -noseglinkedit -pagezero_size -prebind -prebind_all_twolevel_modules -private_bundle -read_only_relocs -sectalign -sectobjectsymbols -whyload -seg1addr -sectcreate -sectobjectsymbols -sectorder -segaddr -segs_read_only_addr -segs_read_write_addr -seg_addr_table -seg_addr_table_filename -seglinkedit -segprot -segs_read_only_addr -segs_read_write_addr -single_module -static -sub_library -sub_umbrella -twolevel_namespace -umbrella -undefined -unexported_symbols_list -weak_reference_mismatches -whatsloaded -F -gused -gfull -mmacosx-version-min=version -miphoneos-version-min=version -mpascal-strings (APPLE ONLY) -mkernel -mone-byte-bool -Xarch_arch

    i386 and x86-64 Options -mtune=cpu-type -march=cpu-type -mfpmath=unit -masm=dialect -mno-fancy-math-387 -mno-fp-ret-in-387 -msoft-float -msvr3-shlib -mno-wide-multiply -mrtd -malign-double -mpreferred-stack-boundary=num -mmmx -msse -msse2 -msse3 -mssse3 -msse4.1 -msse4.2 -msse4 -msse4a -mthreads -mno-align-stringops -minline-all-stringops -mpush-args -maccumulate-outgoing-args -m128bit-long-double -m96bit-long-double -mregparm=num -msseregparm -mstackrealign -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -mno-red-zone -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs -mcmodel=code-model -m32 -m64 -mlarge-data-threshold=num -mms-bitfields -mno-ms-bitfields

    PowerPC Options See RS/6000 and PowerPC Options.

    RS/6000 and PowerPC Options -mcpu=cpu-type -mtune=cpu-type -mpower -mno-power -mpower2 -mno-power2 -mpowerpc -mpowerpc64 -mno-powerpc -maltivec -mno-altivec -mpim-altivec -mno-pim-altivec -mpowerpc-gpopt -mno-powerpc-gpopt -mpowerpc-gfxopt -mno-powerpc-gfxopt -mmfcrf -mno-mfcrf -mpopcntb -mno-popcntb -mfprnd -mno-fprnd -mnew-mnemonics -mold-mnemonics -mfull-toc -mminimal-toc -mno-fp-in-toc -mno-sum-in-toc -m64 -m32 -mxl-compat -mno-xl-compat -mpe -malign-power -malign-natural -msoft-float -mhard-float -mmultiple -mno-multiple -mstring -mno-string -mupdate -mno-update -mfused-madd -mno-fused-madd -mbit-align -mno-bit-align -mstrict-align -mno-strict-align -mrelocatable -mno-relocatable -mrelocatable-lib -mno-relocatable-lib -mtoc -mno-toc -mlittle -mlittle-endian -mbig -mbig-endian -mdynamic-no-pic -maltivec -mswdiv -mprioritize-restricted-insns=priority -msched-costly-dep=dependence_type -minsert-sched-nops=scheme -mcall-sysv -mcall-netbsd -maix-struct-return -msvr4-struct-return -mabi=abi-type -msecure-plt -mbss-plt -misel -mno-isel -misel=yes -misel=no -mspe -mno-spe -mspe=yes -mspe=no -mvrsave -mno-vrsave -mmulhw -mno-mulhw -mdlmzb -mno-dlmzb -mfloat-gprs=yes -mfloat-gprs=no -mfloat-gprs=single -mfloat-gprs=double -mprototype -mno-prototype -msim -mmvme -mads -myellowknife -memb -msdata -msdata=opt -mvxworks -mwindiss -G num -pthread -mms-bitfields -mno-ms-bitfields

Code Generation Options
    -fcall-saved-reg -fcall-used-reg -ffixed-reg -fexceptions -fnon-call-exceptions -funwind-tables -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -finhibit-size-directive -finstrument-functions -fno-common -fno-ident -fpcc-struct-return -fpic -fPIC -fpie -fPIE -fno-jump-tables -freg-struct-return -fshort-enums -fshort-double -fshort-wchar -fverbose-asm -fpack-struct[=n] -fstack-check -fstack-limit-register=reg -fstack-limit-symbol=sym -fargument-alias -fargument-noalias -fargument-noalias-global -fargument-noalias-anything -fleading-underscore -ftls-model=model -fwrapv -fbounds-check -fvisibility

  Options Controlling the Kind of Output
Compilation can involve up to four stages: preprocessing, compilation proper, assembly and linking, always in that order. GCC is capable of preprocessing and compiling several files either into several assembler input files, or into one assembler input file; then each assembler input file produces an object file, and linking combines all the object files (those newly compiled, and those specified as input) into an executable file.

For any given input file, the file name suffix determines what kind of compilation is done:

file.c
    C source code which must be preprocessed.

file.i
    C source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.ii
    C++ source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.m
    Objective-C source code. Note that you must link with the libobjc library to make an Objective-C program work.

file.mi
    Objective-C source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.mm
file.M
    Objective-C++ source code. Note that you must link with the libobjc library to make an Objective-C++ program work. Note that .M refers to a literal capital M.

file.mii
    Objective-C++ source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.h
    C, C++, Objective-C or Objective-C++ header file to be turned into a precompiled header.

file.cc
file.cp
file.cxx
file.cpp
file.CPP
file.c++
file.C
    C++ source code which must be preprocessed. Note that in .cxx, the last two letters must both be literally x. Likewise, .C refers to a literal capital C.

file.hh
file.H
    C++ header file to be turned into a precompiled header.

file.f
file.for
file.FOR
    Fixed form Fortran source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.F
file.fpp
file.FPP
    Fixed form Fortran source code which must be preprocessed (with the traditional preprocessor).

file.f90
file.f95
    Free form Fortran source code which should not be preprocessed.

file.F90
file.F95
    Free form Fortran source code which must be preprocessed (with the traditional preprocessor).

file.ads
    Ada source code file which contains a library unit declaration (a declaration of a package, subprogram, or generic, or a generic instantiation), or a library unit renaming declaration (a package, generic, or subprogram renaming declaration). Such files are also called specs.

file.adb
    Ada source code file containing a library unit body (a subprogram or package body). Such files are also called bodies.

file.s
    Assembler code. Apple's version of GCC runs the preprocessor on these files as well as those ending in .S.

file.S
    Assembler code which must be preprocessed.

other
    An object file to be fed straight into linking. Any file name with no recognized suffix is treated this way.

You can specify the input language explicitly with the -x option:

-x language
    Specify explicitly the language for the following input files (rather than letting the compiler choose a default based on the file name suffix). This option applies to all following input files until the next -x option. Possible values for language are:

            c  c-header  c-cpp-output
            c++  c++-header  c++-cpp-output
            objective-c  objective-c-header  objective-c-cpp-output
            objective-c++ objective-c++-header objective-c++-cpp-output
            assembler  assembler-with-cpp
            ada
            f95  f95-cpp-input
            java
            treelang

-x none
    Turn off any specification of a language, so that subsequent files are handled according to their file name suffixes (as they are if -x has not been used at all).

-ObjC
-ObjC++
    These are similar in effect to -x objective-c and -x objective-c++, but affect only the choice of compiler for files already identified as source files. (APPLE ONLY)

-arch arch
    Compile for the specified target architecture arch. The allowable values are i386, x86_64, ppc and ppc64. Multiple options work, and direct the compiler to produce "universal" binaries including object code for each architecture specified with -arch. This option only works if assembler and libraries are available for each architecture specified. (APPLE ONLY)

-Xarch_arch option
    Apply option to the command line for architecture arch. This is useful for specifying an option that should only apply to one architecture when building a "universal" binary. (APPLE ONLY)

-fsave-repository=file
    Save debug info in separate object file. This is available only while building PCH in -gfull mode.

-pass-exit-codes
    Normally the gcc program will exit with the code of 1 if any phase of the compiler returns a non-success return code. If you specify -pass-exit-codes, the gcc program will instead return with numerically highest error produced by any phase that returned an error indication. The C, C++, and Fortran frontends return 4, if an internal compiler error is encountered.

If you only want some of the stages of compilation, you can use -x (or filename suffixes) to tell gcc where to start, and one of the options -c, -S, or -E to say where gcc is to stop. Note that some combinations (for example, -x cpp-output -E) instruct gcc to do nothing at all.

-c  Compile or assemble the source files, but do not link. The linking stage simply is not done. The ultimate output is in the form of an object file for each source file.

    By default, the object file name for a source file is made by replacing the suffix .c, .i, .s, etc., with .o.

    Unrecognized input files, not requiring compilation or assembly, are ignored.

-S  Stop after the stage of compilation proper; do not assemble. The output is in the form of an assembler code file for each non-assembler input file specified.

    By default, the assembler file name for a source file is made by replacing the suffix .c, .i, etc., with .s.

    Input files that don't require compilation are ignored.

-E  Stop after the preprocessing stage; do not run the compiler proper. The output is in the form of preprocessed source code, which is sent to the standard output.

    Input files which don't require preprocessing are ignored.

-o file
    Place output in file file. This applies regardless to whatever sort of output is being produced, whether it be an executable file, an object file, an assembler file or preprocessed C code.

    If -o is not specified, the default is to put an executable file in a.out, the object file for source.suffix in source.o, its assembler file in source.s, a precompiled header file in source.suffix.gch, and all preprocessed C source on standard output.

-v  Print (on standard error output) the commands executed to run the stages of compilation. Also print the version number of the compiler driver program and of the preprocessor and the compiler proper.

-###
    Like -v except the commands are not executed and all command arguments are quoted. This is useful for shell scripts to capture the driver-generated command lines.

-pipe
    Use pipes rather than temporary files for communication between the various stages of compilation. This fails to work on some systems where the assembler is unable to read from a pipe; but the GNU assembler has no trouble.

-combine
    If you are compiling multiple source files, this option tells the driver to pass all the source files to the compiler at once (for those languages for which the compiler can handle this). This will allow intermodule analysis (IMA) to be performed by the compiler. Currently the only language for which this is supported is C. If you pass source files for multiple languages to the driver, using this option, the driver will invoke the compiler(s) that support IMA once each, passing each compiler all the source files appropriate for it. For those languages that do not support IMA this option will be ignored, and the compiler will be invoked once for each source file in that language. If you use this option in conjunction with -save-temps, the compiler will generate multiple pre-processed files (one for each source file), but only one (combined) .o or .s file.

--help
    Print (on the standard output) a description of the command line options understood by gcc. If the -v option is also specified then --help will also be passed on to the various processes invoked by gcc, so that they can display the command line options they accept. If the -Wextra option is also specified then command line options which have no documentation associated with them will also be displayed.

--target-help
    Print (on the standard output) a description of target specific command line options for each tool.

-no-canonical-prefixes
    Do not expand any symbolic links, resolve references to /../ or /./, or make the path absolute when generating a relative prefix.

--version
    Display the version number and copyrights of the invoked GCC.

@file
    Read command-line options from file. The options read are inserted in place of the original @file option. If file does not exist, or cannot be read, then the option will be treated literally, and not removed.

    Options in file are separated by whitespace. A whitespace character may be included in an option by surrounding the entire option in either single or double quotes. Any character (including a backslash) may be included by prefixing the character to be included with a backslash. The file may itself contain additional @file options; any such options will be processed recursively.

  Compiling C++ Programs
C++ source files conventionally use one of the suffixes .C, .cc, .cpp, .CPP, .c++, .cp, or .cxx; C++ header files often use .hh or .H; and preprocessed C++ files use the suffix .ii. GCC recognizes files with these names and compiles them as C++ programs even if you call the compiler the same way as for compiling C programs (usually with the name gcc).

However, the use of gcc does not add the C++ library. g++ is a program that calls GCC and treats .c, .h and .i files as C++ source files instead of C source files unless -x is used, and automatically specifies linking against the C++ library. This program is also useful when precompiling a C header file with a .h extension for use in C++ compilations. On many systems, g++ is also installed with the name c++.

When you compile C++ programs, you may specify many of the same command-line options that you use for compiling programs in any language; or command-line options meaningful for C and related languages; or options that are meaningful only for C++ programs.

  Options Controlling C Dialect
The following options control the dialect of C (or languages derived from C, such as C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++) that the compiler accepts:

-ansi
    In C mode, support all ISO C90 programs. In C++ mode, remove GNU extensions that conflict with ISO C++.

    This turns off certain features of GCC that are incompatible with ISO C90 (when compiling C code), or of standard C++ (when compiling C++ code), such as the "asm" and "typeof" keywords, and predefined macros such as "unix" and "vax" that identify the type of system you are using. It also enables the undesirable and rarely used ISO trigraph feature. For the C compiler, it disables recognition of C++ style // comments as well as the "inline" keyword.

    The alternate keywords "__asm__", "__extension__", "__inline__" and "__typeof__" continue to work despite -ansi. You would not want to use them in an ISO C program, of course, but it is useful to put them in header files that might be included in compilations done with -ansi. Alternate predefined macros such as "__unix__" and "__vax__" are also available, with or without -ansi.

    The -ansi option does not cause non-ISO programs to be rejected gratuitously. For that, -pedantic is required in addition to -ansi.

    The macro "__STRICT_ANSI__" is predefined when the -ansi option is used. Some header files may notice this macro and refrain from declaring certain functions or defining certain macros that the ISO standard doesn't call for; this is to avoid interfering with any programs that might use these names for other things.

    Functions which would normally be built in but do not have semantics defined by ISO C (such as "alloca" and "ffs") are not built-in functions with -ansi is used.

-std=
    Determine the language standard. This option is currently only supported when compiling C or C++. A value for this option must be provided; possible values are

    c89
    iso9899:1990
        ISO C90 (same as -ansi).

    iso9899:199409
        ISO C90 as modified in amendment 1.

    c99
    c9x
    iso9899:1999
    iso9899:199x
        ISO C99. Note that this standard is not yet fully supported; see <http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.2/c99status.html> for more information. The names c9x and iso9899:199x are deprecated.

    gnu89
        Default, ISO C90 plus GNU extensions (including some C99 features).

    gnu99
    gnu9x
        ISO C99 plus GNU extensions. When ISO C99 is fully implemented in GCC, this will become the default. The name gnu9x is deprecated.

    c++98
        The 1998 ISO C++ standard plus amendments.

    gnu++98
        The same as -std=c++98 plus GNU extensions. This is the default for C++ code.

    Even when this option is not specified, you can still use some of the features of newer standards in so far as they do not conflict with previous C standards. For example, you may use "__restrict__" even when -std=c99 is not specified.

    The -std options specifying some version of ISO C have the same effects as -ansi, except that features that were not in ISO C90 but are in the specified version (for example, // comments and the "inline" keyword in ISO C99) are not disabled.

-fgnu89-inline
    The option -fgnu89-inline tells GCC to use the traditional GNU semantics for "inline" functions when in C99 mode.
      Using this option is roughly equivalent to adding the "gnu_inline" function attribute to all inline functions.

    This option is accepted by GCC versions 4.1.3 and up. In GCC versions /* APPLE LOCAL extern inline */ prior to 4.3 (4.2 for Apple's gcc), C99 inline semantics are not supported, and thus this option is effectively assumed to be present regardless of whether or not it is specified; the only effect of specifying it explicitly is to disable warnings about using inline functions in C99 mode. Likewise, the option -fno-gnu89-inline is not supported in versions of /* APPLE LOCAL extern inline */ GCC before 4.3 (4.2 for Apple's gcc). It is supported only in C99 or gnu99 mode, not in C89 or gnu89 mode.

    The preprocesor macros "__GNUC_GNU_INLINE__" and "__GNUC_STDC_INLINE__" may be used to check which semantics are in effect for "inline" functions.

-aux-info filename
    Output to the given filename prototyped declarations for all functions declared and/or defined in a translation unit, including those in header files. This option is silently ignored in any language other than C.

    Besides declarations, the file indicates, in comments, the origin of each declaration (source file and line), whether the declaration was implicit, prototyped or unprototyped (I, N for new or O for old, respectively, in the first character after the line number and the colon), and whether it came from a declaration or a definition (C or F, respectively, in the following character). In the case of function definitions, a K&R-style list of arguments followed by their declarations is also provided, inside comments, after the declaration.

-faltivec
    This flag is provided for compatibility with Metrowerks CodeWarrior and MrC compilers as well as previous Apple versions of GCC. It causes the -mpim-altivec option to be turned on.

-fasm-blocks
    Enable the use of blocks and entire functions of assembly code within a C or C++ file. The syntax follows that used in CodeWarrior. This option is not supported for ARM targets. (APPLE ONLY)

-fno-asm
    Do not recognize "asm", "inline" or "typeof" as a keyword, so that code can use these words as identifiers. You can use the keywords "__asm__", "__inline__" and "__typeof__" instead. -ansi implies -fno-asm.

    In C++, this switch only affects the "typeof" keyword, since "asm" and "inline" are standard keywords. You may want to use the -fno-gnu-keywords flag instead, which has the same effect. In C99 mode (-std=c99 or -std=gnu99), this switch only affects the "asm" and "typeof" keywords, since "inline" is a standard keyword in ISO C99.

-fno-blocks
    Disable the use of blocks. In -std=c99 mode, blocks are turned off by default. -fblocks can be used to re-enable the feature, if off. Runtime support for blocks first appeared in Mac OS X 10.6. When targeting 10.6 (see -mmacosx-version-min) and later, the extension is on by default.

-fno-builtin
-fno-builtin-function
    Don't recognize built-in functions that do not begin with __builtin_ as prefix.

    GCC normally generates special code to handle certain built-in functions more efficiently; for instance, calls to "alloca" may become single instructions that adjust the stack directly, and calls to "memcpy" may become inline copy loops. The resulting code is often both smaller and faster, but since the function calls no longer appear as such, you cannot set a breakpoint on those calls, nor can you change the behavior of the functions by linking with a different library. In addition, when a function is recognized as a built-in function, GCC may use information about that function to warn about problems with calls to that function, or to generate more efficient code, even if the resulting code still contains calls to that function. For example, warnings are given with -Wformat for bad calls to "printf", when "printf" is built in, and "strlen" is known not to modify global memory.

    With the -fno-builtin-function option only the built-in function function is disabled. function must not begin with __builtin_. If a function is named this is not built-in in this version of GCC, this option is ignored. There is no corresponding -fbuiltin-function option; if you wish to enable built-in functions selectively when using -fno-builtin or -ffreestanding, you may define macros such as:

            #define abs(n)          __builtin_abs ((n))
            #define strcpy(d, s)    __builtin_strcpy ((d), (s))

-fhosted
    Assert that compilation takes place in a hosted environment. This implies -fbuiltin. A hosted environment is one in which the entire standard library is available, and in which "main" has a return type of "int". Examples are nearly everything except a kernel. This is equivalent to -fno-freestanding.

-ffreestanding
    Assert that compilation takes place in a freestanding environment. This implies -fno-builtin. A freestanding environment is one in which the standard library may not exist, and program startup may not necessarily be at "main". The most obvious example is an OS kernel. This is equivalent to -fno-hosted.

-fopenmp
    Enable handling of OpenMP directives "#pragma omp" in C/C++ and "!$omp" in Fortran. When -fopenmp is specified, the compiler generates parallel code according to the OpenMP Application Program Interface v2.5 <http://www.openmp.org/>.

-fms-extensions
    Accept some non-standard constructs used in Microsoft header files.

    Some cases of unnamed fields in structures and unions are only accepted with this option.

-trigraphs
    Support ISO C trigraphs. The -ansi option (and -std options for strict ISO C conformance) implies -trigraphs.

-no-integrated-cpp
    Performs a compilation in two passes: preprocessing and compiling. This option allows a user supplied "cc1", "cc1plus", or "cc1obj" via the -B option. The user supplied compilation step can then add in an additional preprocessing step after normal preprocessing but before compiling. The default is to use the integrated cpp (internal cpp)

    The semantics of this option will change if "cc1", "cc1plus", and "cc1obj" are merged.

-traditional
-traditional-cpp
    Formerly, these options caused GCC to attempt to emulate a pre-standard C compiler. They are now only supported with the -E switch. The preprocessor continues to support a pre-standard mode. See the GNU CPP manual for details.

-fcond-mismatch
    Allow conditional expressions with mismatched types in the second and third arguments. The value of such an expression is void. This option is not supported for C++.

-fno-nested-functions
    Disable nested functions. This option is not supported for C++ or Objective-C++. On Darwin, nested functions are disabled by default.

-fpch-preprocess
    Enable PCH processing even when -E or -save-temps is used.

-fnon-lvalue-assign
    C and C++ forbid the use of casts and conditional expressions as lvalues, e.g.:

            float *p, q, r;
            ((int *)p)++;
            (cond ? q : r) = 3.0;

    As a transitional measure, the Apple version of GCC 4.0 allows casts and conditional expressions to be used as lvalues in certain situations. This is accomplished via the -fnon-lvalue-assign switch, which is on by default. Whenever an lvalue cast or an lvalue conditional expression is encountered, the compiler will issue a deprecation warning and then rewrite the expression as follows:

            (type)expr                ---becomes--->      *(type *)&expr
            cond ? expr1 : expr2      ---becomes--->      *(cond ? &expr1 : &expr2)

    To disallow lvalue casts and lvalue conditional expressions altogether, specify -fno-non-lvalue-assign; lvalue casts and lvalue conditional expressions will be disallowed in future versions of Apple's GCC.

-flax-vector-conversions
    Allow implicit conversions between vectors with differing numbers of elements and/or incompatible element types. This option should not be used for new code.

-funsigned-char
    Let the type "char" be unsigned, like "unsigned char".

    Each kind of machine has a default for what "char" should be. It is either like "unsigned char" by default or like "signed char" by default.

    Ideally, a portable program should always use "signed char" or "unsigned char" when it depends on the signedness of an object. But many programs have been written to use plain "char" and expect it to be signed, or expect it to be unsigned, depending on the machines they were written for. This option, and its inverse, let you make such a program work with the opposite default.

    The type "char" is always a distinct type from each of "signed char" or "unsigned char", even though its behavior is always just like one of those two.

-fsigned-char
    Let the type "char" be signed, like "signed char".

    Note that this is equivalent to -fno-unsigned-char, which is the negative form of -funsigned-char. Likewise, the option -fno-signed-char is equivalent to -funsigned-char.

-fsigned-bitfields
-funsigned-bitfields
-fno-signed-bitfields
-fno-unsigned-bitfields
    These options control whether a bit-field is signed or unsigned, when the declaration does not use either "signed" or "unsigned". By default, such a bit-field is signed, because this is consistent: the basic integer types such as "int" are signed types.

-fconstant-cfstrings
    Enable the automatic creation of a CoreFoundation-type constant string whenever a special builtin "__builtin__CFStringMakeConstantString" is called on a literal string. (APPLE ONLY)

-Wnonportable-cfstrings
    Warn if constant CFString objects contain non-portable characters (default behavior)

-fglobal-alloc-prefer-bytes
-fno-global-alloc-prefer-bytes
    For the x86_32 architecture, prefer byte or short values to word values during global register allocation. Some of the registers on this target can't be used with values smaller than a 32-bit word; allocating these values earlier increases the chance they will get a byte-capable (or short-capable) register. Ignored for other targets. Defaults on with global register allocation ("-Os", "-O2", or "-O3"). (APPLE ONLY)

-fwritable-strings
    Store string constants in the writable data segment and don't uniquize them. This is for compatibility with old programs which assume they can write into string constants.

    Writing into string constants is a very bad idea; "constants" should be constant.

    This option is deprecated.

  Options Controlling C++ Dialect
This section describes the command-line options that are only meaningful for C++ programs; but you can also use most of the GNU compiler options regardless of what language your program is in. For example, you might compile a file "firstClass.C" like this:

        g++ -g -frepo -O -c firstClass.C

In this example, only -frepo is an option meant only for C++ programs; you can use the other options with any language supported by GCC.

Here is a list of options that are only for compiling C++ programs:

-fabi-version=n
    Use version n of the C++ ABI. Version 2 is the version of the C++ ABI that first appeared in G++ 3.4. Version 1 is the version of the C++ ABI that first appeared in G++ 3.2. Version 0 will always be the version that conforms most closely to the C++ ABI specification. Therefore, the ABI obtained using version 0 will change as ABI bugs are fixed.

    The default is version 2.

-fno-access-control
    Turn off all access checking. This switch is mainly useful for working around bugs in the access control code.

-fcheck-new
    Check that the pointer returned by "operator new" is non-null before attempting to modify the storage allocated. This check is normally unnecessary because the C++ standard specifies that "operator new" will only return 0 if it is declared throw(), in which case the compiler will always check the return value even without this option. In all other cases, when "operator new" has a non-empty exception specification, memory exhaustion is signalled by throwing "std::bad_alloc". See also new (nothrow).

-fconserve-space
    Put uninitialized or runtime-initialized global variables into the common segment, as C does. This saves space in the executable at the cost of not diagnosing duplicate definitions. If you compile with this flag and your program mysteriously crashes after "main()" has completed, you may have an object that is being destroyed twice because two definitions were merged.

    This option is no longer useful on most targets, now that support has been added for putting variables into BSS without making them common.

-ffriend-injection
    Inject friend functions into the enclosing namespace, so that they are visible outside the scope of the class in which they are declared. Friend functions were documented to work this way in the old Annotated C++ Reference Manual, and versions of G++ before 4.1 always worked that way. However, in ISO C++ a friend function which is not declared in an enclosing scope can only be found using argument dependent lookup. This option causes friends to be injected as they were in earlier releases.

    This option is for compatibility, and may be removed in a future release of G++.

-fno-elide-constructors
    The C++ standard allows an implementation to omit creating a temporary which is only used to initialize another object of the same type. Specifying this option disables that optimization, and forces G++ to call the copy constructor in all cases.

-fno-enforce-eh-specs
    Don't generate code to check for violation of exception specifications at runtime. This option violates the C++ standard, but may be useful for reducing code size in production builds, much like defining NDEBUG. This does not give user code permission to throw exceptions in violation of the exception specifications; the compiler will still optimize based on the specifications, so throwing an unexpected exception will result in undefined behavior.

-ffor-scope
-fno-for-scope
    If -ffor-scope is specified, the scope of variables declared in a for-init-statement is limited to the for loop itself, as specified by the C++ standard. If -fno-for-scope is specified, the scope of variables declared in a for-init-statement extends to the end of the enclosing scope, as was the case in old versions of G++, and other (traditional) implementations of C++.

    The default if neither flag is given to follow the standard, but to allow and give a warning for old-style code that would otherwise be invalid, or have different behavior.

-fno-gnu-keywords
    Do not recognize "typeof" as a keyword, so that code can use this word as an identifier. You can use the keyword "__typeof__" instead. -ansi implies -fno-gnu-keywords.

-fno-implicit-templates
    Never emit code for non-inline templates which are instantiated implicitly (i.e. by use); only emit code for explicit instantiations.

-fno-implicit-inline-templates
    Don't emit code for implicit instantiations of inline templates, either. The default is to handle inlines differently so that compiles with and without optimization will need the same set of explicit instantiations.

-fno-implement-inlines
    To save space, do not emit out-of-line copies of inline functions controlled by #pragma implementation. This will cause linker errors if these functions are not inlined everywhere they are called.

-fms-extensions
    Disable pedantic warnings about constructs used in MFC, such as implicit int and getting a pointer to member function via non-standard syntax.

-fno-nonansi-builtins
    Disable built-in declarations of functions that are not mandated by ANSI/ISO C. These include "ffs", "alloca", "_exit", "index", "bzero", "conjf", and other related functions.

-fno-operator-names
    Do not treat the operator name keywords "and", "bitand", "bitor", "compl", "not", "or" and "xor" as synonyms as keywords.

-fno-optional-diags
    Disable diagnostics that the standard says a compiler does not need to issue. Currently, the only such diagnostic issued by G++ is the one for a name having multiple meanings within a class.

-fpermissive
    Downgrade some diagnostics about nonconformant code from errors to warnings. Thus, using -fpermissive will allow some nonconforming code to compile.

-frepo
    Enable automatic template instantiation at link time. This option also implies -fno-implicit-templates.

-fno-rtti
    Disable generation of information about every class with virtual functions for use by the C++ runtime type identification features (dynamic_cast and typeid). If you don't use those parts of the language, you can save some space by using this flag. Note that exception handling uses the same information, but it will generate it as needed. The dynamic_cast operator can still be used for casts that do not require runtime type information, i.e. casts to "void *" or to unambiguous base classes.

-fstats
    Emit statistics about front-end processing at the end of the compilation. This information is generally only useful to the G++ development team.

-ftemplate-depth-n
    Set the maximum instantiation depth for template classes to n. A limit on the template instantiation depth is needed to detect endless recursions during template class instantiation. ANSI/ISO C++ conforming programs must not rely on a maximum depth greater than 17.

-fno-threadsafe-statics
    Do not emit the extra code to use the routines specified in the C++ ABI for thread-safe initialization of local statics. You can use this option to reduce code size slightly in code that doesn't need to be thread-safe.

-fuse-cxa-atexit
    Register destructors for objects with static storage duration with the "__cxa_atexit" function rather than the "atexit" function. This option is required for fully standards-compliant handling of static destructors, but will only work if your C library supports "__cxa_atexit".

-fno-use-cxa-get-exception-ptr
    Don't use the "__cxa_get_exception_ptr" runtime routine. This will cause "std::uncaught_exception" to be incorrect, but is necessary if the runtime routine is not available.

-fvisibility-inlines-hidden
    This switch declares that the user does not attempt to compare pointers to inline methods where the addresses of the two functions were taken in different shared objects.

    The effect of this is that GCC may, effectively, mark inline methods with "__attribute__ ((visibility ("hidden")))" so that they do not appear in the export table of a DSO and do not require a PLT indirection when used within the DSO. Enabling this option can have a dramatic effect on load and link times of a DSO as it massively reduces the size of the dynamic export table when the library makes heavy use of templates.

    The behaviour of this switch is not quite the same as marking the methods as hidden directly, because it does not affect static variables local to the function or cause the compiler to deduce that the function is defined in only one shared object.

    You may mark a method as having a visibility explicitly to negate the effect of the switch for that method. For example, if you do want to compare pointers to a particular inline method, you might mark it as having default visibility. Marking the enclosing class with explicit visibility will have no effect.

    Explicitly instantiated inline methods are unaffected by this option as their linkage might otherwise cross a shared library boundary.

-fvisibility-ms-compat
    This flag attempts to use visibility settings to make GCC's C++ linkage model compatible with that of Microsoft Visual Studio.

    The flag makes these changes to GCC's linkage model:

    1. It sets the default visibility to 'hidden', like -fvisibility=hidden. 2. Types, but not their members, are not hidden by default. 3. The One Definition Rule is relaxed for types without explicit visibility specifications which are defined in more than one different shared object: those declarations are permitted if they would have been permitted when this option was not used.

    This option is discouraged, rather, it is preferable for types to be explicitly exported as desired on a per-class basis. Unfortunately because Visual Studio can't compare two different hidden types as unequal for the purposes of type_info and exception handling, users are able to write code that relies upon this behavior.

    Among the consequences of these changes are that static data members of the same type with the same name but defined in different shared objects will be different, so changing one will not change the other; and that pointers to function members defined in different shared objects will not compare equal. When this flag is given, it is a violation of the ODR to define types with the same name differently.

-fno-weak
    Do not use weak symbol support, even if it is provided by the linker. By default, G++ will use weak symbols if they are available. This option exists only for testing, and should not be used by end-users; it will result in inferior code and has no benefits. This option may be removed in a future release of G++.

-nostdinc++
    Do not search for header files in the standard directories specific to C++, but do still search the other standard directories. (This option is used when building the C++ library.)

In addition, these optimization, warning, and code generation options have meanings only for C++ programs:

-fno-default-inline
    Do not assume inline for functions defined inside a class scope.
      Note that these functions will have linkage like inline functions; they just won't be inlined by default.

-Wabi (C++ only)
    Warn when G++ generates code that is probably not compatible with the vendor-neutral C++ ABI. Although an effort has been made to warn about all such cases, there are probably some cases that are not warned about, even though G++ is generating incompatible code. There may also be cases where warnings are emitted even though the code that is generated will be compatible.

    You should rewrite your code to avoid these warnings if you are concerned about the fact that code generated by G++ may not be binary compatible with code generated by other compilers.

    The known incompatibilities at this point include:

    •   Incorrect handling of tail-padding for bit-fields. G++ may attempt to pack data into the same byte as a base class. For example:

                struct A { virtual void f(); int f1 : 1; };
                struct B : public A { int f2 : 1; };

        In this case, G++ will place "B::f2" into the same byte as"A::f1"; other compilers will not. You can avoid this problem by explicitly padding "A" so that its size is a multiple of the byte size on your platform; that will cause G++ and other compilers to layout "B" identically.

    •   Incorrect handling of tail-padding for virtual bases. G++ does not use tail padding when laying out virtual bases. For example:

                struct A { virtual void f(); char c1; };
                struct B { B(); char c2; };
                struct C : public A, public virtual B {};

        In this case, G++ will not place "B" into the tail-padding for "A"; other compilers will. You can avoid this problem by explicitly padding "A" so that its size is a multiple of its alignment (ignoring virtual base classes); that will cause G++ and other compilers to layout "C" identically.

    •   Incorrect handling of bit-fields with declared widths greater than that of their underlying types, when the bit-fields appear in a union. For example:

                union U { int i : 4096; };

        Assuming that an "int" does not have 4096 bits, G++ will make the union too small by the number of bits in an "int".

    •   Empty classes can be placed at incorrect offsets. For example:

                struct A {};

                struct B {
                  A a;
                  virtual void f ();
                };

                struct C : public B, public A {};

        G++ will place the "A" base class of "C" at a nonzero offset; it should be placed at offset zero. G++ mistakenly believes that the "A" data member of "B" is already at offset zero.

    •   Names of template functions whose types involve "typename" or template template parameters can be mangled incorrectly.

                template <typename Q>
                void f(typename Q::X) {}

                template <template <typename> class Q>
                void f(typename Q<int>::X) {}

        Instantiations of these templates may be mangled incorrectly.

-Wctor-dtor-privacy (C++ only)
    Warn when a class seems unusable because all the constructors or destructors in that class are private, and it has neither friends nor public static member functions.

-Wnon-virtual-dtor (C++ only)
    Warn when a class appears to be polymorphic, thereby requiring a virtual destructor, yet it declares a non-virtual one. This warning is also enabled if -Weffc++ is specified.

-Wreorder (C++ only)
    Warn when the order of member initializers given in the code does not match the order in which they must be executed. For instance:

            struct A {
              int i;
              int j;
              A(): j (0), i (1) { }
            };

    The compiler will rearrange the member initializers for i and j to match the declaration order of the members, emitting a warning to that effect. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

The following -W... options are not affected by -Wall.

-Weffc++ (C++ only)
    Warn about violations of the following style guidelines from Scott Meyers' Effective C++ book:

    •   Item 11: Define a copy constructor and an assignment operator for classes with dynamically allocated memory.

    •   Item 12: Prefer initialization to assignment in constructors.

    •   Item 14: Make destructors virtual in base classes.

    •   Item 15: Have "operator=" return a reference to *this.

    •   Item 23: Don't try to return a reference when you must return an object.

    Also warn about violations of the following style guidelines from Scott Meyers' More Effective C++ book:

    •   Item 6: Distinguish between prefix and postfix forms of increment and decrement operators.

    •   Item 7: Never overload "&&", "||", or ",".

    When selecting this option, be aware that the standard library headers do not obey all of these guidelines; use grep -v to filter out those warnings.

-Wno-deprecated (C++ only)
    Do not warn about usage of deprecated features.

-Wstrict-null-sentinel (C++ only)
    Warn also about the use of an uncasted "NULL" as sentinel. When compiling only with GCC this is a valid sentinel, as "NULL" is defined to "__null". Although it is a null pointer constant not a null pointer, it is guaranteed to of the same size as a pointer. But this use is not portable across different compilers.

-Wno-non-template-friend (C++ only)
    Disable warnings when non-templatized friend functions are declared within a template. Since the advent of explicit template specification support in G++, if the name of the friend is an unqualified-id (i.e., friend foo(int)), the C++ language specification demands that the friend declare or define an ordinary, nontemplate function. (Section 14.5.3). Before G++ implemented explicit specification, unqualified-ids could be interpreted as a particular specialization of a templatized function. Because this non-conforming behavior is no longer the default behavior for G++, -Wnon-template-friend allows the compiler to check existing code for potential trouble spots and is on by default. This new compiler behavior can be turned off with -Wno-non-template-friend which keeps the conformant compiler code but disables the helpful warning.

-Wold-style-cast (C++ only)
    Warn if an old-style (C-style) cast to a non-void type is used within a C++ program. The new-style casts (dynamic_cast, static_cast, reinterpret_cast, and const_cast) are less vulnerable to unintended effects and much easier to search for.

-Woverloaded-virtual (C++ only)
    Warn when a function declaration hides virtual functions from a base class. For example, in:

            struct A {
              virtual void f();
            };

            struct B: public A {
              void f(int);
            };

    the "A" class version of "f" is hidden in "B", and code like:

            B* b;
            b->f();

    will fail to compile.

-Wno-pmf-conversions (C++ only)
    Disable the diagnostic for converting a bound pointer to member function to a plain pointer.

-Wsign-promo (C++ only)
    Warn when overload resolution chooses a promotion from unsigned or enumerated type to a signed type, over a conversion to an unsigned type of the same size. Previous versions of G++ would try to preserve unsignedness, but the standard mandates the current behavior.

            struct A {
              operator int ();
              A& operator = (int);
            };

            main ()
            {
              A a,b;
              a = b;
            }

    In this example, G++ will synthesize a default A& operator = (const A&);, while cfront will use the user-defined operator =.

  Options Controlling Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialects
(NOTE: This manual does not describe the Objective-C and Objective-C++ languages themselves. See

This section describes the command-line options that are only meaningful for Objective-C and Objective-C++ programs, but you can also use most of the language-independent GNU compiler options. For example, you might compile a file "some_class.m" like this:

        gcc -g -fgnu-runtime -O -c some_class.m

In this example, -fgnu-runtime is an option meant only for Objective-C and Objective-C++ programs; you can use the other options with any language supported by GCC.

Note that since Objective-C is an extension of the C language, Objective-C compilations may also use options specific to the C front-end (e.g., -Wtraditional). Similarly, Objective-C++ compilations may use C++-specific options (e.g., -Wabi).

Here is a list of options that are only for compiling Objective-C and Objective-C++ programs:

-fconstant-string-class=class-name
    Use class-name as the name of the class to instantiate for each literal string specified with the syntax "@"..."". The default class name is "NXConstantString" if the GNU runtime is being used, and "NSConstantString" if the NeXT runtime is being used (see below). The -fconstant-cfstrings option, if also present, will override the -fconstant-string-class setting and cause "@"..."" literals to be laid out as constant CoreFoundation strings.

-fgnu-runtime
    Generate object code compatible with the standard GNU Objective-C runtime. This is the default for most types of systems.

-fnext-runtime
    Generate output compatible with the NeXT runtime. This is the default for NeXT-based systems, including Darwin and Mac OS X. The macro "__NEXT_RUNTIME__" is predefined if (and only if) this option is used.

-fno-nil-receivers
    Assume that all Objective-C message dispatches (e.g., "[receiver message:arg]") in this translation unit ensure that the receiver is not "nil". This allows for more efficient entry points in the runtime to be used. Currently, this option is only available in conjunction with the NeXT runtime on Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

-fobjc-call-cxx-cdtors
    For each Objective-C class, check if any of its instance variables is a C++ object with a non-trivial default constructor. If so, synthesize a special "- (id) .cxx_construct" instance method that will run non-trivial default constructors on any such instance variables, in order, and then return "self". Similarly, check if any instance variable is a C++ object with a non-trivial destructor, and if so, synthesize a special "- (void) .cxx_destruct" method that will run all such default destructors, in reverse order.

    The "- (id) .cxx_construct" and/or "- (void) .cxx_destruct" methods thusly generated will only operate on instance variables declared in the current Objective-C class, and not those inherited from superclasses. It is the responsibility of the Objective-C runtime to invoke all such methods in an object's inheritance hierarchy. The "- (id) .cxx_construct" methods will be invoked by the runtime immediately after a new object instance is allocated; the "- (void) .cxx_destruct" methods will be invoked immediately before the runtime deallocates an object instance.

    As of this writing, only the NeXT runtime on Mac OS X 10.4 and later has support for invoking the "- (id) .cxx_construct" and "- (void) .cxx_destruct" methods.

-fobjc-direct-dispatch
    Allow fast jumps to the message dispatcher. On Darwin this is accomplished via the comm page.

-fobjc-sjlj-exceptions
    Enable syntactic support for structured exception handling in Objective-C, similar to what is offered by C++ and Java. This option is unavailable in conjunction with the NeXT runtime on Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier. This option is on by default with the NeXT runtime.

              @try {
                ...
                   @throw expr;
                ...
              }
              @catch (AnObjCClass *exc) {
                ...
                  @throw expr;
                ...
                  @throw;
                ...
              }
              @catch (AnotherClass *exc) {
                ...
              }
              @catch (id allOthers) {
                ...
              }
              @finally {
                ...
                  @throw expr;
                ...
              }

    The @throw statement may appear anywhere in an Objective-C or Objective-C++ program; when used inside of a @catch block, the @throw may appear without an argument (as shown above), in which case the object caught by the @catch will be rethrown.

    Note that only (pointers to) Objective-C objects may be thrown and caught using this scheme. When an object is thrown, it will be caught by the nearest @catch clause capable of handling objects of that type, analogously to how "catch" blocks work in C++ and Java. A "@catch(id ...)" clause (as shown above) may also be provided to catch any and all Objective-C exceptions not caught by previous @catch clauses (if any).

    The @finally clause, if present, will be executed upon exit from the immediately preceding "@try ... @catch" section. This will happen regardless of whether any exceptions are thrown, caught or rethrown inside the "@try ... @catch" section, analogously to the behavior of the "finally" clause in Java.

    There are several caveats to using the new exception mechanism:

    •   Although currently designed to be binary compatible with "NS_HANDLER"-style idioms provided by the "NSException" class, the new exceptions can only be used on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and later systems, due to additional functionality needed in the (NeXT) Objective-C runtime.

    •   As mentioned above, the new exceptions do not support handling types other than Objective-C objects. Furthermore, when used from Objective-C++, the Objective-C exception model does not interoperate with C++ exceptions at this time. This means you cannot @throw an exception from Objective-C and "catch" it in C++, or vice versa (i.e., "throw ... @catch").

    The -fobjc-sjlj-exceptions switch also enables the use of synchronization blocks for thread-safe execution:

              @synchronized (ObjCClass *guard) {
                ...
              }

    Upon entering the @synchronized block, a thread of execution shall first check whether a lock has been placed on the corresponding "guard" object by another thread. If it has, the current thread shall wait until the other thread relinquishes its lock. Once "guard" becomes available, the current thread will place its own lock on it, execute the code contained in the @synchronized block, and finally relinquish the lock (thereby making "guard" available to other threads).

    Unlike Java, Objective-C does not allow for entire methods to be marked @synchronized. Note that throwing exceptions out of @synchronized blocks is allowed, and will cause the guarding object to be unlocked properly.

-fobjc-gc
    Enable garbage collection (GC) in Objective-C and Objective-C++ programs. The resulting binary requires additional runtime support which is present on Mac OS X Version 10.5 (Leopard) and later. All Objective-C objects are presumed to be garbage collected. To aid in this effort, compiler implements assignments of Objective-C object pointers via runtime support functions. These functions work correctly in non-GC environments as well, in case this code is used as part of a library. Assignments of objects into instance variables of other objects are intercepted, so are assignments to global object variables. In general, assignments through pointers to objects are intercepted. Additionally, assignments of objects as fields within structures are intercepted.

    In addition, other pointer variables may be marked with the __strong storage class modifier to indicate to the compiler that these assignments need to use the assignment runtime functions as well, allowing the memory referenced by these pointers to be allocated from the collector. A __weak storage class modifier for pointers is also introduced to indicate a zero-ing weak reference. This is permitted only for instance variables of an object or globals. The compiler arranges for all reads as well as writes to these variables to occur via runtime support functions. Under garbage collection these variables are not consulted when determining what is not garbage and they are set to nil (zero) if the memory they reference is deemed garbage and is collected.

              __strong void *p;  // assignments to 'p' will have runtime support calls
              int *q;            // assignments to 'q' ordinarly will not
                ...
              (__strong int *)q = 0;   // this assignment will call a runtime support function

    Conversely, the "__weak" type qualifier may be used to call weak runtime functions.

              __weak id q;      // assignments to 'q' will have the '__weak' semantics
              id p;             // assignments to 'p' will have the "__strong' semantics
                ...
              (__weak id)p = 0;   // Fall back to '__weak' semantics in this assignment.

-fobjc-gc-only
    Use this option to indicate that the Objective-C program supports garbage collection (GC) only - that is, it does not contain retain/release logic. This flag implies -fobjc-gc as well. With this flag, framework is marked as not honoring retain/release.

-freplace-objc-classes
    Emit a special marker instructing ld(1) not to statically link in the resulting object file, and allow dyld(1) to load it in at run time instead. This is used in conjunction with the Fix-and-Continue debugging mode, where the object file in question may be recompiled and dynamically reloaded in the course of program execution, without the need to restart the program itself. Currently, Fix-and-Continue functionality is only available in conjunction with the NeXT runtime on Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

-fzero-link
    When compiling for the NeXT runtime, the compiler ordinarily replaces calls to "objc_getClass("...")" (when the name of the class is known at compile time) with static class references that get initialized at load time, which improves run-time performance. Specifying the -fzero-link flag suppresses this behavior and causes calls to "objc_getClass("...")" to be retained. This is useful in Zero-Link debugging mode, since it allows for individual class implementations to be modified during program execution.

-gen-decls
    Dump interface declarations for all classes seen in the source file to a file named sourcename.decl.

-Wassign-intercept
    Warn whenever an Objective-C assignment is being intercepted by the garbage collector.

-Wno-protocol
    If a class is declared to implement a protocol, a warning is issued for every method in the protocol that is not implemented by the class. The default behavior is to issue a warning for every method not explicitly implemented in the class, even if a method implementation is inherited from the superclass. If you use the -Wno-protocol option, then methods inherited from the superclass are considered to be implemented, and no warning is issued for them.

-Wselector
    Warn if multiple methods of different types for the same selector are found during compilation. The check is performed on the list of methods in the final stage of compilation. Additionally, a check is performed for each selector appearing in a "@selector(...)" expression, and a corresponding method for that selector has been found during compilation. Because these checks scan the method table only at the end of compilation, these warnings are not produced if the final stage of compilation is not reached, for example because an error is found during compilation, or because the -fsyntax-only option is being used.

-Wproperty-assign-default
    Warn if no "assign", "retain", or "copy" attribute is specified on a property of pointer to object type. Property is then assumed to be "assign" by default.

-Wdirect-ivar-access
    Warn if ivar of pointer to object type is directly accessed in non-gc mode, instead of using property syntax access.

-Wstrict-selector-match
    Warn if multiple methods with differing argument and/or return types are found for a given selector when attempting to send a message using this selector to a receiver of type "id" or "Class". When this flag is off (which is the default behavior), the compiler will omit such warnings if any differences found are confined to types which share the same size and alignment.

-Wundeclared-selector
    Warn if a "@selector(...)" expression referring to an undeclared selector is found. A selector is considered undeclared if no method with that name has been declared before the "@selector(...)" expression, either explicitly in an @interface or @protocol declaration, or implicitly in an @implementation section. This option always performs its checks as soon as a "@selector(...)" expression is found, while -Wselector only performs its checks in the final stage of compilation. This also enforces the coding style convention that methods and selectors must be declared before being used.

-print-objc-runtime-info
    Generate C header describing the largest structure that is passed by value, if any.

  Options to Control Diagnostic Messages Formatting
Traditionally, diagnostic messages have been formatted irrespective of the output device's aspect (e.g. its width, ...). The options described below can be used to control the diagnostic messages formatting algorithm, e.g. how many characters per line, how often source location information should be reported. Right now, only the C++ front end can honor these options. However it is expected, in the near future, that the remaining front ends would be able to digest them correctly.

-fmessage-length=n
    Try to format error messages so that they fit on lines of about n characters. The default is 72 characters for g++ and 0 for the rest of the front ends supported by GCC. If n is zero, then no line-wrapping will be done; each error message will appear on a single line.

-fdiagnostics-show-location=once
    Only meaningful in line-wrapping mode. Instructs the diagnostic messages reporter to emit once source location information; that is, in case the message is too long to fit on a single physical line and has to be wrapped, the source location won't be emitted (as prefix) again, over and over, in subsequent continuation lines. This is the default behavior.

-fdiagnostics-show-location=every-line
    Only meaningful in line-wrapping mode. Instructs the diagnostic messages reporter to emit the same source location information (as prefix) for physical lines that result from the process of breaking a message which is too long to fit on a single line.

-fdiagnostics-show-option
    This option instructs the diagnostic machinery to add text to each diagnostic emitted, which indicates which command line option directly controls that diagnostic, when such an option is known to the diagnostic machinery.

  Options to Request or Suppress Warnings
Warnings are diagnostic messages that report constructions which are not inherently erroneous but which are risky or suggest there may have been an error.

You can request many specific warnings with options beginning -W, for example -Wimplicit to request warnings on implicit declarations. Each of these specific warning options also has a negative form beginning -Wno- to turn off warnings; for example, -Wno-implicit. This manual lists only one of the two forms, whichever is not the default.

The following options control the amount and kinds of warnings produced by GCC; for further, language-specific options also refer to C++ Dialect Options and Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options.

-fsyntax-only
    Check the code for syntax errors, but don't do anything beyond that.

-pedantic
    Issue all the warnings demanded by strict ISO C and ISO C++; reject all programs that use forbidden extensions, and some other programs that do not follow ISO C and ISO C++. For ISO C, follows the version of the ISO C standard specified by any -std option used.

    Valid ISO C and ISO C++ programs should compile properly with or without this option (though a rare few will require -ansi or a -std option specifying the required version of ISO C). However, without this option, certain GNU extensions and traditional C and C++ features are supported as well. With this option, they are rejected.

    -pedantic does not cause warning messages for use of the alternate keywords whose names begin and end with __. Pedantic warnings are also disabled in the expression that follows "__extension__". However, only system header files should use these escape routes; application programs should avoid them.

    Some users try to use -pedantic to check programs for strict ISO C conformance. They soon find that it does not do quite what they want: it finds some non-ISO practices, but not all---only those for which ISO C requires a diagnostic, and some others for which diagnostics have been added.

    A feature to report any failure to conform to ISO C might be useful in some instances, but would require considerable additional work and would be quite different from -pedantic. We don't have plans to support such a feature in the near future.

    Where the standard specified with -std represents a GNU extended dialect of C, such as gnu89 or gnu99, there is a corresponding base standard, the version of ISO C on which the GNU extended dialect is based. Warnings from -pedantic are given where they are required by the base standard. (It would not make sense for such warnings to be given only for features not in the specified GNU C dialect, since by definition the GNU dialects of C include all features the compiler supports with the given option, and there would be nothing to warn about.)

-pedantic-errors
    Like -pedantic, except that errors are produced rather than warnings.

-w  Inhibit all warning messages.

-Wno-import
    Inhibit warning messages about the use of #import.

-Wno-#warnings
    Inhibit warning messages issued by #warning.

-Wextra-tokens
    Warn about extra tokens at the end of prepreprocessor directives. (APPLE ONLY)

-Wnewline-eof
    Warn about files missing a newline at the end of the file. (APPLE ONLY)

-Wno-altivec-long-deprecated
    Do not warn about the use of the deprecated 'long' keyword in AltiVec data types. (APPLE ONLY)

-Wchar-subscripts
    Warn if an array subscript has type "char". This is a common cause of error, as programmers often forget that this type is signed on some machines. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wcomment
    Warn whenever a comment-start sequence /* appears in a /* comment, or whenever a Backslash-Newline appears in a // comment. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wfatal-errors
    This option causes the compiler to abort compilation on the first error occurred rather than trying to keep going and printing further error messages.

-Wno-format
    Check calls to "printf" and "scanf", etc., to make sure that the arguments supplied have types appropriate to the format string specified, and that the conversions specified in the format string make sense. This includes standard functions, and others specified by format attributes, in the "printf", "scanf", "strftime" and "strfmon" (an X/Open extension, not in the C standard) families (or other target-specific families). Which functions are checked without format attributes having been specified depends on the standard version selected, and such checks of functions without the attribute specified are disabled by -ffreestanding or -fno-builtin.

    The formats are checked against the format features supported by GNU libc version 2.2. These include all ISO C90 and C99 features, as well as features from the Single Unix Specification and some BSD and GNU extensions. Other library implementations may not support all these features; GCC does not support warning about features that go beyond a particular library's limitations. However, if -pedantic is used with -Wformat, warnings will be given about format features not in the selected standard version (but not for "strfmon" formats, since those are not in any version of the C standard).

    Since -Wformat also checks for null format arguments for several functions, -Wformat also implies -Wnonnull.

    -Wformat is included in -Wall. For more control over some aspects of format checking, the options -Wformat-y2k, -Wno-format-extra-args, -Wno-format-zero-length, -Wformat-nonliteral, -Wformat-security, and -Wformat=2 are available, but are not included in -Wall.

-Wformat-y2k
    If -Wformat is specified, also warn about "strftime" formats which may yield only a two-digit year.

-Wno-format-extra-args
    If -Wformat is specified, do not warn about excess arguments to a "printf" or "scanf" format function. The C standard specifies that such arguments are ignored.

    Where the unused arguments lie between used arguments that are specified with $ operand number specifications, normally warnings are still given, since the implementation could not know what type to pass to "va_arg" to skip the unused arguments. However, in the case of "scanf" formats, this option will suppress the warning if the unused arguments are all pointers, since the Single Unix Specification says that such unused arguments are allowed.

-Wno-format-zero-length
    If -Wformat is specified, do not warn about zero-length formats. The C standard specifies that zero-length formats are allowed.

-Wformat-nonliteral
    If -Wformat is specified, also warn if the format string is not a string literal and so cannot be checked, unless the format function takes its format arguments as a "va_list".

-Wno-format-security
    If -Wformat is specified, also warn about uses of format functions that represent possible security problems. At present, this warns about calls to "printf" and "scanf" functions where the format string is not a string literal and there are no format arguments, as in "printf (foo);". This may be a security hole if the format string came from untrusted input and contains %n. (This is currently a subset of what -Wformat-nonliteral warns about, but in future warnings may be added to -Wformat-security that are not included in -Wformat-nonliteral.)

-Wformat=2
    Enable -Wformat plus format checks not included in -Wformat. Currently equivalent to -Wformat -Wformat-nonliteral -Wformat-security -Wformat-y2k.

-Wnonnull
    Warn about passing a null pointer for arguments marked as requiring a non-null value by the "nonnull" function attribute.

    -Wnonnull is included in -Wall and -Wformat. It can be disabled with the -Wno-nonnull option.

-Wglobal-constructors
    Warn about namespace scope data that requires construction or destruction, or functions that use the constructor attribute or the destructor attribute. Additionally warn if the Objective-C GNU runtime is used to initialize various metadata.

-Winit-self (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only)
    Warn about uninitialized variables which are initialized with themselves. Note this option can only be used with the -Wuninitialized option, which in turn only works with -O1 and above.

    For example, GCC will warn about "i" being uninitialized in the following snippet only when -Winit-self has been specified:

            int f()
            {
              int i = i;
              return i;
            }

-Wimplicit-int
    Warn when a declaration does not specify a type. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wimplicit-function-declaration
-Werror-implicit-function-declaration
    Give a warning (or error) whenever a function is used before being declared. The form -Wno-error-implicit-function-declaration is not supported. This warning is enabled by -Wall (as a warning, not an error).

-Wimplicit
    Same as -Wimplicit-int and -Wimplicit-function-declaration. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wmain
    Warn if the type of main is suspicious. main should be a function with external linkage, returning int, taking either zero arguments, two, or three arguments of appropriate types. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wmissing-braces
    Warn if an aggregate or union initializer is not fully bracketed. In the following example, the initializer for a is not fully bracketed, but that for b is fully bracketed.

            int a[2][2] = { 0, 1, 2, 3 };
            int b[2][2] = { { 0, 1 }, { 2, 3 } };

    This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wmissing-include-dirs (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only)
    Warn if a user-supplied include directory does not exist.

-Wparentheses
    Warn if parentheses are omitted in certain contexts, such as when there is an assignment in a context where a truth value is expected, or when operators are nested whose precedence people often get confused about. Only the warning for an assignment used as a truth value is supported when compiling C++; the other warnings are only supported when compiling C.

    Also warn if a comparison like x<=y<=z appears; this is equivalent to (x<=y ? 1 : 0) <= z, which is a different interpretation from that of ordinary mathematical notation.

    Also warn about constructions where there may be confusion to which "if" statement an "else" branch belongs. Here is an example of such a case:

            {
              if (a)
                if (b)
                  foo ();
              else
                bar ();
            }

    In C, every "else" branch belongs to the innermost possible "if" statement, which in this example is "if (b)". This is often not what the programmer expected, as illustrated in the above example by indentation the programmer chose. When there is the potential for this confusion, GCC will issue a warning when this flag is specified. To eliminate the warning, add explicit braces around the innermost "if" statement so there is no way the "else" could belong to the enclosing "if". The resulting code would look like this:

            {
              if (a)
                {
                  if (b)
                    foo ();
                  else
                    bar ();
                }
            }

    This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wsequence-point
    Warn about code that may have undefined semantics because of violations of sequence point rules in the C and C++ standards.

    The C and C++ standards defines the order in which expressions in a C/C++ program are evaluated in terms of sequence points, which represent a partial ordering between the execution of parts of the program: those executed before the sequence point, and those executed after it. These occur after the evaluation of a full expression (one which is not part of a larger expression), after the evaluation of the first operand of a "&&", "||", "? :" or "," (comma) operator, before a function is called (but after the evaluation of its arguments and the expression denoting the called function), and in certain other places. Other than as expressed by the sequence point rules, the order of evaluation of subexpressions of an expression is not specified. All these rules describe only a partial order rather than a total order, since, for example, if two functions are called within one expression with no sequence point between them, the order in which the functions are called is not specified. However, the standards committee have ruled that function calls do not overlap.

    It is not specified when between sequence points modifications to the values of objects take effect. Programs whose behavior depends on this have undefined behavior; the C and C++ standards specify that "Between the previous and next sequence point an object shall have its stored value modified at most once by the evaluation of an expression. Furthermore, the prior value shall be read only to determine the value to be stored.". If a program breaks these rules, the results on any particular implementation are entirely unpredictable.

    Examples of code with undefined behavior are "a = a++;", "a[n] = b[n++]" and "a[i++] = i;". Some more complicated cases are not diagnosed by this option, and it may give an occasional false positive result, but in general it has been found fairly effective at detecting this sort of problem in programs.

    The standard is worded confusingly, therefore there is some debate over the precise meaning of the sequence point rules in subtle cases. Links to discussions of the problem, including proposed formal definitions, may be found on the GCC readings page, at <http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html>.

    This warning is enabled by -Wall for C and C++.

-Wreturn-type
    Warn whenever a function is defined with a return-type that defaults to "int". Also warn about any "return" statement with no return-value in a function whose return-type is not "void".

    For C, also warn if the return type of a function has a type qualifier such as "const". Such a type qualifier has no effect, since the value returned by a function is not an lvalue. ISO C prohibits qualified "void" return types on function definitions, so such return types always receive a warning even without this option.

    For C++, a function without return type always produces a diagnostic message, even when -Wno-return-type is specified. The only exceptions are main and functions defined in system headers.

    This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wswitch
    Warn whenever a "switch" statement has an index of enumerated type and lacks a "case" for one or more of the named codes of that enumeration. (The presence of a "default" label prevents this warning.) "case" labels outside the enumeration range also provoke warnings when this option is used. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wswitch-default
    Warn whenever a "switch" statement does not have a "default" case.

-Wswitch-enum
    Warn whenever a "switch" statement has an index of enumerated type and lacks a "case" for one or more of the named codes of that enumeration. "case" labels outside the enumeration range also provoke warnings when this option is used.

-Wtrigraphs
    Warn if any trigraphs are encountered that might change the meaning of the program (trigraphs within comments are not warned about). This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wunused-function
    Warn whenever a static function is declared but not defined or a non-inline static function is unused. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wunused-label
    Warn whenever a label is declared but not used. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

    To suppress this warning use the unused attribute.

-Wunused-parameter
    Warn whenever a function parameter is unused aside from its declaration.

    To suppress this warning use the unused attribute.

-Wunused-variable
    Warn whenever a local variable or non-constant static variable is unused aside from its declaration. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

    To suppress this warning use the unused attribute.

-Wunused-value
    Warn whenever a statement computes a result that is explicitly not used. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

    To suppress this warning cast the expression to void.

-Wunused
    All the above -Wunused options combined.

    In order to get a warning about an unused function parameter, you must either specify -Wextra -Wunused (note that -Wall implies -Wunused), or separately specify -Wunused-parameter.

-Wuninitialized
    Warn if an automatic variable is used without first being initialized or if a variable may be clobbered by a "setjmp" call.

    These warnings are possible only in optimizing compilation, because they require data flow information that is computed only when optimizing. If you do not specify -O, you will not get these warnings. Instead, GCC will issue a warning about -Wuninitialized requiring -O.

    If you want to warn about code which uses the uninitialized value of the variable in its own initializer, use the -Winit-self option.

    These warnings occur for individual uninitialized or clobbered elements of structure, union or array variables as well as for variables which are uninitialized or clobbered as a whole. They do not occur for variables or elements declared "volatile". Because these warnings depend on optimization, the exact variables or elements for which there are warnings will depend on the precise optimization options and version of GCC used.

    Note that there may be no warning about a variable that is used only to compute a value that itself is never used, because such computations may be deleted by data flow analysis before the warnings are printed.

    These warnings are made optional because GCC is not smart enough to see all the reasons why the code might be correct despite appearing to have an error. Here is one example of how this can happen:

            {
              int x;
              switch (y)
                {
                case 1: x = 1;
                  break;
                case 2: x = 4;
                  break;
                case 3: x = 5;
                }
              foo (x);
            }

    If the value of "y" is always 1, 2 or 3, then "x" is always initialized, but GCC doesn't know this. Here is another common case:

            {
              int save_y;
              if (change_y) save_y = y, y = new_y;
              ...
              if (change_y) y = save_y;
            }

    This has no bug because "save_y" is used only if it is set.

    This option also warns when a non-volatile automatic variable might be changed by a call to "longjmp". These warnings as well are possible only in optimizing compilation.

    The compiler sees only the calls to "setjmp". It cannot know where "longjmp" will be called; in fact, a signal handler could call it at any point in the code. As a result, you may get a warning even when there is in fact no problem because "longjmp" cannot in fact be called at the place which would cause a problem.

    Some spurious warnings can be avoided if you declare all the functions you use that never return as "noreturn".

    This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wunknown-pragmas
    Warn when a #pragma directive is encountered which is not understood by GCC. If this command line option is used, warnings will even be issued for unknown pragmas in system header files. This is not the case if the warnings were only enabled by the -Wall command line option.

-Wno-pragmas
    Do not warn about misuses of pragmas, such as incorrect parameters, invalid syntax, or conflicts between pragmas. See also -Wunknown-pragmas.

-Wstrict-aliasing
    This option is only active when -fstrict-aliasing is active. It warns about code which might break the strict aliasing rules that the compiler is using for optimization. The warning does not catch all cases, but does attempt to catch the more common pitfalls. It is included in -Wall.

-Wstrict-aliasing=2
    This option is only active when -fstrict-aliasing is active. It warns about code which might break the strict aliasing rules that the compiler is using for optimization. This warning catches more cases than -Wstrict-aliasing, but it will also give a warning for some ambiguous cases that are safe.

-Wstrict-overflow
-Wstrict-overflow=n
    This option is only active when -fstrict-overflow is active. It warns about cases where the compiler optimizes based on the assumption that signed overflow does not occur. Note that it does not warn about all cases where the code might overflow: it only warns about cases where the compiler implements some optimization. Thus this warning depends on the optimization level.

    An optimization which assumes that signed overflow does not occur is perfectly safe if the values of the variables involved are such that overflow never does, in fact, occur. Therefore this warning can easily give a false positive: a warning about code which is not actually a problem. To help focus on important issues, several warning levels are defined. No warnings are issued for the use of undefined signed overflow when estimating how many iterations a loop will require, in particular when determining whether a loop will be executed at all.

    -Wstrict-overflow=1
        Warn about cases which are both questionable and easy to avoid. For example: "x + 1 > x"; with -fstrict-overflow, the compiler will simplify this to 1. This level of -Wstrict-overflow is enabled by -Wall; higher levels are not, and must be explicitly requested.

    -Wstrict-overflow=2
        Also warn about other cases where a comparison is simplified to a constant. For example: "abs (x) >= 0". This can only be simplified when -fstrict-overflow is in effect, because "abs (INT_MIN)" overflows to "INT_MIN", which is less than zero. -Wstrict-overflow (with no level) is the same as -Wstrict-overflow=2.

    -Wstrict-overflow=3
        Also warn about other cases where a comparison is simplified. For example: "x + 1 > 1" will be simplified to "x > 0".

    -Wstrict-overflow=4
        Also warn about other simplifications not covered by the above cases. For example: "(x * 10) / 5" will be simplified to "x * 2".

    -Wstrict-overflow=5
        Also warn about cases where the compiler reduces the magnitude of a constant involved in a comparison. For example: "x + 2 > y" will be simplified to "x + 1 >= y". This is reported only at the highest warning level because this simplification applies to many comparisons, so this warning level will give a very large number of false positives.

-Wall
    All of the above -W options combined. This enables all the warnings about constructions that some users consider questionable, and that are easy to avoid (or modify to prevent the warning), even in conjunction with macros. This also enables some language-specific warnings described in C++ Dialect Options and Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options.

-Wmost
    This is equivalent to -Wall -Wno-parentheses. (APPLE ONLY)

The following -W... options are not implied by -Wall. Some of them warn about constructions that users generally do not consider questionable, but which occasionally you might wish to check for; others warn about constructions that are necessary or hard to avoid in some cases, and there is no simple way to modify the code to suppress the warning.

-Wextra
    (This option used to be called -W. The older name is still supported, but the newer name is more descriptive.) Print extra warning messages for these events:

    •   A function can return either with or without a value. (Falling off the end of the function body is considered returning without a value.) For example, this function would evoke such a warning:

                foo (a)
                {
                  if (a > 0)
                    return a;
                }

    •   An expression-statement or the left-hand side of a comma expression contains no side effects. To suppress the warning, cast the unused expression to void. For example, an expression such as x[i,j] will cause a warning, but x[(void)i,j] will not.

    •   An unsigned value is compared against zero with < or >=.

    •   Storage-class specifiers like "static" are not the first things in a declaration. According to the C Standard, this usage is obsolescent.

    •   If -Wall or -Wunused is also specified, warn about unused arguments.

    •   A comparison between signed and unsigned values could produce an incorrect result when the signed value is converted to unsigned. (But don't warn if -Wno-sign-compare is also specified.)

    •   An aggregate has an initializer which does not initialize all members. This warning can be independently controlled by -Wmissing-field-initializers.

    •   An initialized field without side effects is overridden when using designated initializers. This warning can be independently controlled by -Woverride-init.

    •   A function parameter is declared without a type specifier in K&R-style functions:

                void foo(bar) { }

    •   An empty body occurs in an if or else statement.

    •   (C++ only) An empty body occurs in a while or for statement with no whitespacing before the semicolon. This warning can be independently controlled by -Wempty-body.

    •   A pointer is compared against integer zero with <, <=, >, or >=.

    •   A variable might be changed by longjmp or vfork.

    •   (C++ only) An enumerator and a non-enumerator both appear in a conditional expression.

    •   (C++ only) A non-static reference or non-static const member appears in a class without constructors.

    •   (C++ only) Ambiguous virtual bases.

    •   (C++ only) Subscripting an array which has been declared register.

    •   (C++ only) Taking the address of a variable which has been declared register.

    •   (C++ only) A base class is not initialized in a derived class' copy constructor.

-Wno-div-by-zero
    Do not warn about compile-time integer division by zero. Floating point division by zero is not warned about, as it can be a legitimate way of obtaining infinities and NaNs.

-Wsystem-headers
    Print warning messages for constructs found in system header files. Warnings from system headers are normally suppressed, on the assumption that they usually do not indicate real problems and would only make the compiler output harder to read. Using this command line option tells GCC to emit warnings from system headers as if they occurred in user code. However, note that using -Wall in conjunction with this option will not warn about unknown pragmas in system headers---for that, -Wunknown-pragmas must also be used.

-Wfloat-equal
    Warn if floating point values are used in equality comparisons.

    The idea behind this is that sometimes it is convenient (for the programmer) to consider floating-point values as approximations to infinitely precise real numbers. If you are doing this, then you need to compute (by analyzing the code, or in some other way) the maximum or likely maximum error that the computation introduces, and allow for it when performing comparisons (and when producing output, but that's a different problem). In particular, instead of testing for equality, you would check to see whether the two values have ranges that overlap; and this is done with the relational operators, so equality comparisons are probably mistaken.

-Wfour-char-constants
    Warn about four char constants, e.g. OSType 'APPL'. This warning is disabled by default.

-Wtraditional (C only)
    Warn about certain constructs that behave differently in traditional and ISO C. Also warn about ISO C constructs that have no traditional C equivalent, and/or problematic constructs which should be avoided.

    •   Macro parameters that appear within string literals in the macro body. In traditional C macro replacement takes place within string literals, but does not in ISO C.

    •   In traditional C, some preprocessor directives did not exist. Traditional preprocessors would only consider a line to be a directive if the # appeared in column 1 on the line. Therefore -Wtraditional warns about directives that traditional C understands but would ignore because the # does not appear as the first character on the line. It also suggests you hide directives like #pragma not understood by traditional C by indenting them. Some traditional implementations would not recognize #elif, so it suggests avoiding it altogether.

    •   A function-like macro that appears without arguments.

    •   The unary plus operator.

    •   The U integer constant suffix, or the F or L floating point constant suffixes. (Traditional C does support the L suffix on integer constants.) Note, these suffixes appear in macros defined in the system headers of most modern systems, e.g. the _MIN/_MAX macros in "<limits.h>". Use of these macros in user code might normally lead to spurious warnings, however GCC's integrated preprocessor has enough context to avoid warning in these cases.

    •   A function declared external in one block and then used after the end of the block.

    •   A "switch" statement has an operand of type "long".

    •   A non-"static" function declaration follows a "static" one. This construct is not accepted by some traditional C compilers.

    •   The ISO type of an integer constant has a different width or signedness from its traditional type. This warning is only issued if the base of the constant is ten. I.e. hexadecimal or octal values, which typically represent bit patterns, are not warned about.

    •   Usage of ISO string concatenation is detected.

    •   Initialization of automatic aggregates.

    •   Identifier conflicts with labels. Traditional C lacks a separate namespace for labels.

    •   Initialization of unions. If the initializer is zero, the warning is omitted. This is done under the assumption that the zero initializer in user code appears conditioned on e.g. "__STDC__" to avoid missing initializer warnings and relies on default initialization to zero in the traditional C case.

    •   Conversions by prototypes between fixed/floating point values and vice versa. The absence of these prototypes when compiling with traditional C would cause serious problems. This is a subset of the possible conversion warnings, for the full set use -Wconversion.

    •   Use of ISO C style function definitions. This warning intentionally is not issued for prototype declarations or variadic functions because these ISO C features will appear in your code when using libiberty's traditional C compatibility macros, "PARAMS" and "VPARAMS". This warning is also bypassed for nested functions because that feature is already a GCC extension and thus not relevant to traditional C compatibility.

-Wdeclaration-after-statement (C only)
    Warn when a declaration is found after a statement in a block. This construct, known from C++, was introduced with ISO C99 and is by default allowed in GCC. It is not supported by ISO C90 and was not supported by GCC versions before GCC 3.0.

-Wno-discard-qual
    This flag allows user to suppress warning that is issued when qualification is discarded in situations like, initialization, assignment and argument passing.

-Wundef
    Warn if an undefined identifier is evaluated in an #if directive.

-Wno-endif-labels
    Do not warn whenever an #else or an #endif are followed by text.

-Wshadow
    Warn whenever a local variable shadows another local variable, parameter or global variable or whenever a built-in function is shadowed.

-Wlarger-than-len
    Warn whenever an object of larger than len bytes is defined.

-Wunsafe-loop-optimizations
    Warn if the loop cannot be optimized because the compiler could not assume anything on the bounds of the loop indices. With -funsafe-loop-optimizations warn if the compiler made such assumptions.

-Wpointer-arith
    Warn about anything that depends on the "size of" a function type or of "void". GNU C assigns these types a size of 1, for convenience in calculations with "void *" pointers and pointers to functions.

-Wbad-function-cast (C only)
    Warn whenever a function call is cast to a non-matching type. For example, warn if "int malloc()" is cast to "anything *".

-Wc++-compat
    Warn about ISO C constructs that are outside of the common subset of ISO C and ISO C++, e.g. request for implicit conversion from "void *" to a pointer to non-"void" type.

-Wcast-qual
    Warn whenever a pointer is cast so as to remove a type qualifier from the target type. For example, warn if a "const char *" is cast to an ordinary "char *".

-Wcast-align
    Warn whenever a pointer is cast such that the required alignment of the target is increased. For example, warn if a "char *" is cast to an "int *" on machines where integers can only be accessed at two- or four-byte boundaries.

-Wwrite-strings
    When compiling C, give string constants the type "const char[length]" so that copying the address of one into a non-"const" "char *" pointer will get a warning; when compiling C++, warn about the deprecated conversion from string literals to "char *". This warning, by default, is enabled for C++ programs. These warnings will help you find at compile time code that can try to write into a string constant, but only if you have been very careful about using "const" in declarations and prototypes. Otherwise, it will just be a nuisance; this is why we did not make -Wall request these warnings.

-Wconversion
    Warn if a prototype causes a type conversion that is different from what would happen to the same argument in the absence of a prototype. This includes conversions of fixed point to floating and vice versa, and conversions changing the width or signedness of a fixed point argument except when the same as the default promotion.

    Also, warn if a negative integer constant expression is implicitly converted to an unsigned type. For example, warn about the assignment "x = -1" if "x" is unsigned. But do not warn about explicit casts like "(unsigned) -1".

-Wshorten-64-to-32
    Warn if a value is implicitly converted from a 64 bit type to a 32 bit type.

-Wempty-body
    Warn if an empty body occurs in an if or else statement. Additionally, in C++, warn when an empty body occurs in a while or for statement with no whitespacing before the semicolon. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra.

-Wsign-compare
    Warn when a comparison between signed and unsigned values could produce an incorrect result when the signed value is converted to unsigned. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra; to get the other warnings of -Wextra without this warning, use -Wextra -Wno-sign-compare.

-Waddress
    Warn about suspicious uses of memory addresses. These include using the address of a function in a conditional expression, such as "void func(void); if (func)", and comparisons against the memory address of a string literal, such as "if (x == "abc")". Such uses typically indicate a programmer error: the address of a function always evaluates to true, so their use in a conditional usually indicate that the programmer forgot the parentheses in a function call; and comparisons against string literals result in unspecified behavior and are not portable in C, so they usually indicate that the programmer intended to use "strcmp". This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Waggregate-return
    Warn if any functions that return structures or unions are defined or called. (In languages where you can return an array, this also elicits a warning.)

-Wno-attributes
    Do not warn if an unexpected "__attribute__" is used, such as unrecognized attributes, function attributes applied to variables, etc. This will not stop errors for incorrect use of supported attributes.

-Wstrict-prototypes (C only)
    Warn if a function is declared or defined without specifying the argument types. (An old-style function definition is permitted without a warning if preceded by a declaration which specifies the argument types.)

-Wold-style-definition (C only)
    Warn if an old-style function definition is used. A warning is given even if there is a previous prototype.

-Wmissing-prototypes
    Warn if a global function is defined without a previous prototype declaration. This warning is issued even if the definition itself provides a prototype. The aim is to detect global functions that fail to be declared in header files.

-Wmissing-declarations (C only)
    Warn if a global function is defined without a previous declaration. Do so even if the definition itself provides a prototype. Use this option to detect global functions that are not declared in header files.

-Wmissing-field-initializers
    Warn if a structure's initializer has some fields missing. For example, the following code would cause such a warning, because "x.h" is implicitly zero:

            struct s { int f, g, h; };
            struct s x = { 3, 4 };

    This option does not warn about designated initializers, so the following modification would not trigger a warning:

            struct s { int f, g, h; };
            struct s x = { .f = 3, .g = 4 };

    This warning is included in -Wextra. To get other -Wextra warnings without this one, use -Wextra -Wno-missing-field-initializers.

-Wmissing-noreturn
    Warn about functions which might be candidates for attribute "noreturn". Note these are only possible candidates, not absolute ones. Care should be taken to manually verify functions actually do not ever return before adding the "noreturn" attribute, otherwise subtle code generation bugs could be introduced. You will not get a warning for "main" in hosted C environments.

-Wmissing-format-attribute
    Warn about function pointers which might be candidates for "format" attributes. Note these are only possible candidates, not absolute ones. GCC will guess that function pointers with "format" attributes that are used in assignment, initialization, parameter passing or return statements should have a corresponding "format" attribute in the resulting type. I.e. the left-hand side of the assignment or initialization, the type of the parameter variable, or the return type of the containing function respectively should also have a "format" attribute to avoid the warning.

    GCC will also warn about function definitions which might be candidates for "format" attributes. Again, these are only possible candidates. GCC will guess that "format" attributes might be appropriate for any function that calls a function like "vprintf" or "vscanf", but this might not always be the case, and some functions for which "format" attributes are appropriate may not be detected.

-Wno-multichar
    Do not warn if a multicharacter constant ('FOO') is used. Usually they indicate a typo in the user's code, as they have implementation-defined values, and should not be used in portable code. This flag does not control warning for a constant with four characters, use -Wfour-char-constants instead.

-Wnormalized=<none|id|nfc|nfkc>
    In ISO C and ISO C++, two identifiers are different if they are different sequences of characters. However, sometimes when characters outside the basic ASCII character set are used, you can have two different character sequences that look the same. To avoid confusion, the ISO 10646 standard sets out some normalization rules which when applied ensure that two sequences that look the same are turned into the same sequence. GCC can warn you if you are using identifiers which have not been normalized; this option controls that warning.

    There are four levels of warning that GCC supports. The default is -Wnormalized=nfc, which warns about any identifier which is not in the ISO 10646 "C" normalized form, NFC. NFC is the recommended form for most uses.

    Unfortunately, there are some characters which ISO C and ISO C++ allow in identifiers that when turned into NFC aren't allowable as identifiers. That is, there's no way to use these symbols in portable ISO C or C++ and have all your identifiers in NFC. -Wnormalized=id suppresses the warning for these characters. It is hoped that future versions of the standards involved will correct this, which is why this option is not the default.

    You can switch the warning off for all characters by writing -Wnormalized=none. You would only want to do this if you were using some other normalization scheme (like "D"), because otherwise you can easily create bugs that are literally impossible to see.

    Some characters in ISO 10646 have distinct meanings but look identical in some fonts or display methodologies, especially once formatting has been applied. For instance "\u207F", "SUPERSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER N", will display just like a regular "n" which has been placed in a superscript. ISO 10646 defines the NFKC normalization scheme to convert all these into a standard form as well, and GCC will warn if your code is not in NFKC if you use -Wnormalized=nfkc. This warning is comparable to warning about every identifier that contains the letter O because it might be confused with the digit 0, and so is not the default, but may be useful as a local coding convention if the programming environment is unable to be fixed to display these characters distinctly.

-Wno-deprecated-declarations
    Do not warn about uses of functions, variables, and types marked as deprecated by using the "deprecated" attribute.

-Wno-overflow
    Do not warn about compile-time overflow in constant expressions.

-Woverride-init
    Warn if an initialized field without side effects is overridden when using designated initializers.

    This warning is included in -Wextra. To get other -Wextra warnings without this one, use -Wextra -Wno-override-init.

-Wpacked
    Warn if a structure is given the packed attribute, but the packed attribute has no effect on the layout or size of the structure. Such structures may be mis-aligned for little benefit. For instance, in this code, the variable "f.x" in "struct bar" will be misaligned even though "struct bar" does not itself have the packed attribute:

            struct foo {
              int x;
              char a, b, c, d;
            } __attribute__((packed));
            struct bar {
              char z;
              struct foo f;
            };

-Wpadded
    Warn if padding is included in a structure, either to align an element of the structure or to align the whole structure. Sometimes when this happens it is possible to rearrange the fields of the structure to reduce the padding and so make the structure smaller.

-Wredundant-decls
    Warn if anything is declared more than once in the same scope, even in cases where multiple declaration is valid and changes nothing.

-Wnested-externs (C only)
    Warn if an "extern" declaration is encountered within a function.

-Wunreachable-code
    Warn if the compiler detects that code will never be executed.

    This option is intended to warn when the compiler detects that at least a whole line of source code will never be executed, because some condition is never satisfied or because it is after a procedure that never returns.

    It is possible for this option to produce a warning even though there are circumstances under which part of the affected line can be executed, so care should be taken when removing apparently-unreachable code.

    For instance, when a function is inlined, a warning may mean that the line is unreachable in only one inlined copy of the function.

    This option is not made part of -Wall because in a debugging version of a program there is often substantial code which checks correct functioning of the program and is, hopefully, unreachable because the program does work. Another common use of unreachable code is to provide behavior which is selectable at compile-time.

-Winline
    Warn if a function can not be inlined and it was declared as inline. Even with this option, the compiler will not warn about failures to inline functions declared in system headers.

    The compiler uses a variety of heuristics to determine whether or not to inline a function. For example, the compiler takes into account the size of the function being inlined and the amount of inlining that has already been done in the current function. Therefore, seemingly insignificant changes in the source program can cause the warnings produced by -Winline to appear or disappear.

-Wno-invalid-offsetof (C++ only)
    Suppress warnings from applying the offsetof macro to a non-POD type. According to the 1998 ISO C++ standard, applying offsetof to a non-POD type is undefined. In existing C++ implementations, however, offsetof typically gives meaningful results even when applied to certain kinds of non-POD types. (Such as a simple struct that fails to be a POD type only by virtue of having a constructor.) This flag is for users who are aware that they are writing nonportable code and who have deliberately chosen to ignore the warning about it.

    The restrictions on offsetof may be relaxed in a future version of the C++ standard.

-Wno-int-to-pointer-cast (C only)
    Suppress warnings from casts to pointer type of an integer of a different size.

-Wno-pointer-to-int-cast (C only)
    Suppress warnings from casts from a pointer to an integer type of a different size.

-Winvalid-pch
    Warn if a precompiled header is found in the search path but can't be used.

-Wlong-long
    Warn if long long type is used. This is default. To inhibit the warning messages, use -Wno-long-long. Flags -Wlong-long and -Wno-long-long are taken into account only when -pedantic flag is used.

-Wvariadic-macros
    Warn if variadic macros are used in pedantic ISO C90 mode, or the GNU alternate syntax when in pedantic ISO C99 mode. This is default. To inhibit the warning messages, use -Wno-variadic-macros.

-Wvolatile-register-var
    Warn if a register variable is declared volatile. The volatile modifier does not inhibit all optimizations that may eliminate reads and/or writes to register variables.

-Wdisabled-optimization
    Warn if a requested optimization pass is disabled. This warning does not generally indicate that there is anything wrong with your code; it merely indicates that GCC's optimizers were unable to handle the code effectively. Often, the problem is that your code is too big or too complex; GCC will refuse to optimize programs when the optimization itself is likely to take inordinate amounts of time.

-Wpointer-sign
    Warn for pointer argument passing or assignment with different signedness. This option is only supported for C and Objective-C. It is implied by -Wall and by -pedantic, which can be disabled with -Wno-pointer-sign.

-Werror
    Make all warnings into errors.

-Werror=
    Make the specified warning into an errors. The specifier for a warning is appended, for example -Werror=switch turns the warnings controlled by -Wswitch into errors. This switch takes a negative form, to be used to negate -Werror for specific warnings, for example -Wno-error=switch makes -Wswitch warnings not be errors, even when -Werror is in effect. You can use the -fdiagnostics-show-option option to have each controllable warning amended with the option which controls it, to determine what to use with this option.

    Note that specifying -Werror=foo automatically implies -Wfoo. However, -Wno-error=foo does not imply anything.

-Wstack-protector
    This option is only active when -fstack-protector is active. It warns about functions that will not be protected against stack smashing.

-Woverlength-strings
    Warn about string constants which are longer than the "minimum maximum" length specified in the C standard. Modern compilers generally allow string constants which are much longer than the standard's minimum limit, but very portable programs should avoid using longer strings.

    The limit applies after string constant concatenation, and does not count the trailing NUL. In C89, the limit was 509 characters; in C99, it was raised to 4095. C++98 does not specify a normative minimum maximum, so we do not diagnose overlength strings in C++.

    This option is implied by -pedantic, and can be disabled with -Wno-overlength-strings.

  Options for Debugging Your Program or GCC
GCC has various special options that are used for debugging either your program or GCC:

-g  Produce debugging information in the operating system's native format (stabs, COFF, XCOFF, or DWARF 2). GDB can work with this debugging information.

    On most systems that use stabs format, -g enables use of extra debugging information that only GDB can use; this extra information makes debugging work better in GDB but will probably make other debuggers crash or refuse to read the program. If you want to control for certain whether to generate the extra information, use -gstabs+ or -gstabs (see below).

    GCC allows you to use -g with -O. The shortcuts taken by optimized code may occasionally produce surprising results: some variables you declared may not exist at all; flow of control may briefly move where you did not expect it; some statements may not be executed because they compute constant results or their values were already at hand; some statements may execute in different places because they were moved out of loops.

    Nevertheless it proves possible to debug optimized output. This makes it reasonable to use the optimizer for programs that might have bugs.

    The following options are useful when GCC is generated with the capability for more than one debugging format.

-ggdb
    Produce debugging information for use by GDB. This means to use the most expressive format available (DWARF 2, stabs, or the native format if neither of those are supported), including GDB extensions if at all possible.

-gstabs
    Produce debugging information in stabs format (if that is supported), without GDB extensions. This is the format used by DBX on most BSD systems. On MIPS, Alpha and System V Release 4 systems this option produces stabs debugging output which is not understood by DBX or SDB. On System V Release 4 systems this option requires the GNU assembler.

-flimit-debug-info
    Limit debug information produced to reduce size of debug binary.

-feliminate-unused-debug-symbols
    Produce debugging information in stabs format (if that is supported), for only symbols that are actually used.

-femit-class-debug-always
    Instead of emitting debugging information for a C++ class in only one object file, emit it in all object files using the class. This option should be used only with debuggers that are unable to handle the way GCC normally emits debugging information for classes because using this option will increase the size of debugging information by as much as a factor of two.

-gstabs+
    Produce debugging information in stabs format (if that is supported), using GNU extensions understood only by the GNU debugger (GDB). The use of these extensions is likely to make other debuggers crash or refuse to read the program.

-gdwarf-2
    Produce debugging information in DWARF version 2 format (if that is supported). This is the format used by DBX on IRIX 6. With this option, GCC uses features of DWARF version 3 when they are useful; version 3 is upward compatible with version 2, but may still cause problems for older debuggers.

    (Other debug formats, such as -gcoff, are not supported in Darwin or Mac OS X.)

-glevel
-ggdblevel
-gstabslevel
    Request debugging information and also use level to specify how much information. The default level is 2.

    Level 0 produces no debug information at all. Thus, -g0 negates -g.

    Level 1 produces minimal information, enough for making backtraces in parts of the program that you don't plan to debug. This includes descriptions of functions and external variables, but no information about local variables and no line numbers.

    Level 3 includes extra information, such as all the macro definitions present in the program. Some debuggers support macro expansion when you use -g3.

    -gdwarf-2 does not accept a concatenated debug level, because GCC used to support an option -gdwarf that meant to generate debug information in version 1 of the DWARF format (which is very different from version 2), and it would have been too confusing. That debug format is long obsolete, but the option cannot be changed now. Instead use an additional -glevel option to change the debug level for DWARF2.

-feliminate-dwarf2-dups
    Compress DWARF2 debugging information by eliminating duplicated information about each symbol. This option only makes sense when generating DWARF2 debugging information with -gdwarf-2.

-p  Generate extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis program prof. You must use this option when compiling the source files you want data about, and you must also use it when linking.

-pg Generate extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis program gprof. You must use this option when compiling the source files you want data about, and you must also use it when linking.

-Q  Makes the compiler print out each function name as it is compiled, and print some statistics about each pass when it finishes.

-ftime-report
    Makes the compiler print some statistics about the time consumed by each pass when it finishes.

-fmem-report
    Makes the compiler print some statistics about permanent memory allocation when it finishes.

-fopt-diary
    Enable optimization diary entries using DWARF encoding. This option does nothing unless gdwarf-2 is specified.

-fprofile-arcs
    Add code so that program flow arcs are instrumented. During execution the program records how many times each branch and call is executed and how many times it is taken or returns. When the compiled program exits it saves this data to a file called auxname.gcda for each source file. The data may be used for profile-directed optimizations (-fbranch-probabilities), or for test coverage analysis (-ftest-coverage). Each object file's auxname is generated from the name of the output file, if explicitly specified and it is not the final executable, otherwise it is the basename of the source file. In both cases any suffix is removed (e.g. foo.gcda for input file dir/foo.c, or dir/foo.gcda for output file specified as -o dir/foo.o).

--coverage
    This option is used to compile and link code instrumented for coverage analysis. The option is a synonym for -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage (when compiling) and -lgcov (when linking). See the documentation for those options for more details.

    •   Compile the source files with -fprofile-arcs plus optimization and code generation options. For test coverage analysis, use the additional -ftest-coverage option. You do not need to profile every source file in a program.

    •   Link your object files with -lgcov or -fprofile-arcs (the latter implies the former).

    •   Run the program on a representative workload to generate the arc profile information. This may be repeated any number of times. You can run concurrent instances of your program, and provided that the file system supports locking, the data files will be correctly updated. Also "fork" calls are detected and correctly handled (double counting will not happen).

    •   For profile-directed optimizations, compile the source files again with the same optimization and code generation options plus -fbranch-probabilities.

    •   For test coverage analysis, use gcov to produce human readable information from the .gcno and .gcda files. Refer to the gcov documentation for further information.

    With -fprofile-arcs, for each function of your program GCC creates a program flow graph, then finds a spanning tree for the graph. Only arcs that are not on the spanning tree have to be instrumented: the compiler adds code to count the number of times that these arcs are executed. When an arc is the only exit or only entrance to a block, the instrumentation code can be added to the block; otherwise, a new basic block must be created to hold the instrumentation code.

-ftest-coverage
    Produce a notes file that the gcov code-coverage utility can use to show program coverage. Each source file's note file is called auxname.gcno. Refer to the -fprofile-arcs option above for a description of auxname and instructions on how to generate test coverage data. Coverage data will match the source files more closely, if you do not optimize.

-dletters
-fdump-rtl-pass
    Says to make debugging dumps during compilation at times specified by letters. This is used for debugging the RTL-based passes of the compiler. The file names for most of the dumps are made by appending a pass number and a word to the dumpname. dumpname is generated from the name of the output file, if explicitly specified and it is not an executable, otherwise it is the basename of the source file. These switches may have different effects when -E is used for preprocessing.

    Most debug dumps can be enabled either passing a letter to the -d option, or with a long -fdump-rtl switch; here are the possible letters for use in letters and pass, and their meanings:

    -dA Annotate the assembler output with miscellaneous debugging information.

    -dB
    -fdump-rtl-bbro
        Dump after block reordering, to file.148r.bbro.

    -dc
    -fdump-rtl-combine
        Dump after instruction combination, to the file file.129r.combine.

    -dC
    -fdump-rtl-ce1
    -fdump-rtl-ce2
        -dC and -fdump-rtl-ce1 enable dumping after the first if conversion, to the file file.117r.ce1. -dC and -fdump-rtl-ce2 enable dumping after the second if conversion, to the file file.130r.ce2.

    -dd
    -fdump-rtl-btl
    -fdump-rtl-dbr
        -dd and -fdump-rtl-btl enable dumping after branch target load optimization, to file.31.btl. -dd and -fdump-rtl-dbr enable dumping after delayed branch scheduling, to file.36.dbr.

    -dD Dump all macro definitions, at the end of preprocessing, in addition to normal output.

    -dE
    -fdump-rtl-ce3
        Dump after the third if conversion, to file.146r.ce3.

    -df
    -fdump-rtl-cfg
    -fdump-rtl-life
        -df and -fdump-rtl-cfg enable dumping after control and data flow analysis, to file.116r.cfg. -df and -fdump-rtl-cfg enable dumping dump after life analysis, to file.128r.life1 and file.135r.life2.

    -dg
    -fdump-rtl-greg
        Dump after global register allocation, to file.139r.greg.

    -dG
    -fdump-rtl-gcse
    -fdump-rtl-bypass
        -dG and -fdump-rtl-gcse enable dumping after GCSE, to file.114r.gcse. -dG and -fdump-rtl-bypass enable dumping after jump bypassing and control flow optimizations, to file.115r.bypass.

    -dh
    -fdump-rtl-eh
        Dump after finalization of EH handling code, to file.02.eh.

    -di
    -fdump-rtl-sibling
        Dump after sibling call optimizations, to file.106r.sibling.

    -dj
    -fdump-rtl-jump
        Dump after the first jump optimization, to file.112r.jump.

    -dk
    -fdump-rtl-stack
        Dump after conversion from registers to stack, to file.152r.stack.

    -dl
    -fdump-rtl-lreg
        Dump after local register allocation, to file.138r.lreg.

    -dL
    -fdump-rtl-loop2
        -dL and -fdump-rtl-loop2 enable dumping after the loop optimization pass, to file.119r.loop2, file.120r.loop2_init, file.121r.loop2_invariant, and file.125r.loop2_done.

    -dm
    -fdump-rtl-sms
        Dump after modulo scheduling, to file.136r.sms.

    -dM
    -fdump-rtl-mach
        Dump after performing the machine dependent reorganization pass, to file.155r.mach if that pass exists.

    -dn
    -fdump-rtl-rnreg
        Dump after register renumbering, to file.147r.rnreg.

    -dN
    -fdump-rtl-regmove
        Dump after the register move pass, to file.132r.regmove.

    -do
    -fdump-rtl-postreload
        Dump after post-reload optimizations, to file.24.postreload.

    -dr
    -fdump-rtl-expand
        Dump after RTL generation, to file.104r.expand.

    -dR
    -fdump-rtl-sched2
        Dump after the second scheduling pass, to file.150r.sched2.

    -ds
    -fdump-rtl-cse
        Dump after CSE (including the jump optimization that sometimes follows CSE), to file.113r.cse.

    -dS
    -fdump-rtl-sched
        Dump after the first scheduling pass, to file.21.sched.

    -dt
    -fdump-rtl-cse2
        Dump after the second CSE pass (including the jump optimization that sometimes follows CSE), to file.127r.cse2.

    -dT
    -fdump-rtl-tracer
        Dump after running tracer, to file.118r.tracer.

    -dV
    -fdump-rtl-vpt
    -fdump-rtl-vartrack
        -dV and -fdump-rtl-vpt enable dumping after the value profile transformations, to file.10.vpt. -dV and -fdump-rtl-vartrack enable dumping after variable tracking, to file.154r.vartrack.

    -dw
    -fdump-rtl-flow2
        Dump after the second flow pass, to file.142r.flow2.

    -dz
    -fdump-rtl-peephole2
        Dump after the peephole pass, to file.145r.peephole2.

    -dZ
    -fdump-rtl-web
        Dump after live range splitting, to file.126r.web.

    -da
    -fdump-rtl-all
        Produce all the dumps listed above.

    -dH Produce a core dump whenever an error occurs.

    -dm Print statistics on memory usage, at the end of the run, to standard error.

    -dp Annotate the assembler output with a comment indicating which pattern and alternative was used. The length of each instruction is also printed.

    -dP Dump the RTL in the assembler output as a comment before each instruction. Also turns on -dp annotation.

    -dv For each of the other indicated dump files (either with -d or -fdump-rtl-pass), dump a representation of the control flow graph suitable for viewing with VCG to file.pass.vcg.

    -dx Just generate RTL for a function instead of compiling it. Usually used with r (-fdump-rtl-expand).

    -dy Dump debugging information during parsing, to standard error.

-fdump-noaddr
    When doing debugging dumps (see -d option above), suppress address output. This makes it more feasible to use diff on debugging dumps for compiler invocations with different compiler binaries and/or different text / bss / data / heap / stack / dso start locations.

-fdump-unnumbered
    When doing debugging dumps (see -d option above), suppress instruction numbers, line number note and address output. This makes it more feasible to use diff on debugging dumps for compiler invocations with different options, in particular with and without -g.

-fdump-translation-unit (C++ only)
-fdump-translation-unit-options (C++ only)
    Dump a representation of the tree structure for the entire translation unit to a file. The file name is made by appending .tu to the source file name. If the -options form is used, options controls the details of the dump as described for the -fdump-tree options.

-fdump-class-hierarchy (C++ only)
-fdump-class-hierarchy-options (C++ only)
    Dump a representation of each class's hierarchy and virtual function table layout to a file. The file name is made by appending .class to the source file name. If the -options form is used, options controls the details of the dump as described for the -fdump-tree options.

-fdump-ipa-switch
    Control the dumping at various stages of inter-procedural analysis language tree to a file. The file name is generated by appending a switch specific suffix to the source file name. The following dumps are possible:

    all Enables all inter-procedural analysis dumps; currently the only produced dump is the cgraph dump.

    cgraph
        Dumps information about call-graph optimization, unused function removal, and inlining decisions.

-fdump-tree-switch
-fdump-tree-switch-options
    Control the dumping at various stages of processing the intermediate language tree to a file. The file name is generated by appending a switch specific suffix to the source file name. If the -options form is used, options is a list of - separated options that control the details of the dump. Not all options are applicable to all dumps, those which are not meaningful will be ignored. The following options are available

    address
        Print the address of each node. Usually this is not meaningful as it changes according to the environment and source file. Its primary use is for tying up a dump file with a debug environment.

    slim
        Inhibit dumping of members of a scope or body of a function merely because that scope has been reached. Only dump such items when they are directly reachable by some other path. When dumping pretty-printed trees, this option inhibits dumping the bodies of control structures.

    raw Print a raw representation of the tree. By default, trees are pretty-printed into a C-like representation.

    details
        Enable more detailed dumps (not honored by every dump option).

    stats
        Enable dumping various statistics about the pass (not honored by every dump option).

    blocks
        Enable showing basic block boundaries (disabled in raw dumps).

    vops
        Enable showing virtual operands for every statement.

    lineno
        Enable showing line numbers for statements.

    uid Enable showing the unique ID ("DECL_UID") for each variable.

    all Turn on all options, except raw, slim and lineno.

    The following tree dumps are possible:

    original
        Dump before any tree based optimization, to file.original.

    optimized
        Dump after all tree based optimization, to file.optimized.

    inlined
        Dump after function inlining, to file.inlined.

    gimple
        Dump each function before and after the gimplification pass to a file. The file name is made by appending .gimple to the source file name.

    cfg Dump the control flow graph of each function to a file. The file name is made by appending .cfg to the source file name.

    vcg Dump the control flow graph of each function to a file in VCG format. The file name is made by appending .vcg to the source file name. Note that if the file contains more than one function, the generated file cannot be used directly by VCG. You will need to cut and paste each function's graph into its own separate file first.

    ch  Dump each function after copying loop headers. The file name is made by appending .ch to the source file name.

    ssa Dump SSA related information to a file. The file name is made by appending .ssa to the source file name.

    salias
        Dump structure aliasing variable information to a file. This file name is made by appending .salias to the source file name.

    alias
        Dump aliasing information for each function. The file name is made by appending .alias to the source file name.

    ccp Dump each function after CCP. The file name is made by appending .ccp to the source file name.

    storeccp
        Dump each function after STORE-CCP. The file name is made by appending .storeccp to the source file name.

    pre Dump trees after partial redundancy elimination. The file name is made by appending .pre to the source file name.

    fre Dump trees after full redundancy elimination. The file name is made by appending .fre to the source file name.

    copyprop
        Dump trees after copy propagation. The file name is made by appending .copyprop to the source file name.

    store_copyprop
        Dump trees after store copy-propagation. The file name is made by appending .store_copyprop to the source file name.

    dce Dump each function after dead code elimination. The file name is made by appending .dce to the source file name.

    mudflap
        Dump each function after adding mudflap instrumentation. The file name is made by appending .mudflap to the source file name.

    sra Dump each function after performing scalar replacement of aggregates. The file name is made by appending .sra to the source file name.

    sink
        Dump each function after performing code sinking. The file name is made by appending .sink to the source file name.

    dom Dump each function after applying dominator tree optimizations. The file name is made by appending .dom to the source file name.

    dse Dump each function after applying dead store elimination. The file name is made by appending .dse to the source file name.

    phiopt
        Dump each function after optimizing PHI nodes into straightline code. The file name is made by appending .phiopt to the source file name.

    forwprop
        Dump each function after forward propagating single use variables. The file name is made by appending .forwprop to the source file name.

    copyrename
        Dump each function after applying the copy rename optimization. The file name is made by appending .copyrename to the source file name.

    nrv Dump each function after applying the named return value optimization on generic trees. The file name is made by appending .nrv to the source file name.

    vect
        Dump each function after applying vectorization of loops. The file name is made by appending .vect to the source file name.

    vrp Dump each function after Value Range Propagation (VRP). The file name is made by appending .vrp to the source file name.

    all Enable all the available tree dumps with the flags provided in this option.

-ftree-vectorizer-verbose=n
    This option controls the amount of debugging output the vectorizer prints. This information is written to standard error, unless -fdump-tree-all or -fdump-tree-vect is specified, in which case it is output to the usual dump listing file, .vect. For n=0 no diagnostic information is reported. If n=1 the vectorizer reports each loop that got vectorized, and the total number of loops that got vectorized. If n=2 the vectorizer also reports non-vectorized loops that passed the first analysis phase (vect_analyze_loop_form) - i.e. countable, inner-most, single-bb, single-entry/exit loops. This is the same verbosity level that -fdump-tree-vect-stats uses. Higher verbosity levels mean either more information dumped for each reported loop, or same amount of information reported for more loops: If n=3, alignment related information is added to the reports. If n=4, data-references related information (e.g. memory dependences, memory access-patterns) is added to the reports. If n=5, the vectorizer reports also non-vectorized inner-most loops that did not pass the first analysis phase (i.e. may not be countable, or may have complicated control-flow). If n=6, the vectorizer reports also non-vectorized nested loops. For n=7, all the information the vectorizer generates during its analysis and transformation is reported. This is the same verbosity level that -fdump-tree-vect-details uses.

-frandom-seed=string
    This option provides a seed that GCC uses when it would otherwise use random numbers. It is used to generate certain symbol names that have to be different in every compiled file. It is also used to place unique stamps in coverage data files and the object files that produce them. You can use the -frandom-seed option to produce reproducibly identical object files.

    The string should be different for every file you compile.

-fsched-verbose=n
    On targets that use instruction scheduling, this option controls the amount of debugging output the scheduler prints. This information is written to standard error, unless -dS or -dR is specified, in which case it is output to the usual dump listing file, .sched or .sched2 respectively. However for n greater than nine, the output is always printed to standard error.

    For n greater than zero, -fsched-verbose outputs the same information as -dRS. For n greater than one, it also output basic block probabilities, detailed ready list information and unit/insn info. For n greater than two, it includes RTL at abort point, control-flow and regions info. And for n over four, -fsched-verbose also includes dependence info.

-save-temps
    Store the usual "temporary" intermediate files permanently; place them in the current directory and name them based on the source file. Thus, compiling foo.c with -c -save-temps would produce files foo.i and foo.s, as well as foo.o. This creates a preprocessed foo.i output file even though the compiler now normally uses an integrated preprocessor.

    When used in combination with the -x command line option, -save-temps is sensible enough to avoid over writing an input source file with the same extension as an intermediate file. The corresponding intermediate file may be obtained by renaming the source file before using -save-temps.

-mllvm string
    This option provides a way to supply llvm optimization and code generation debugging options to LLVM component directly. This option is intended for compiler developers, who are investigating LLVM bugs, not end users.

-time
    Report the CPU time taken by each subprocess in the compilation sequence. For C source files, this is the compiler proper and assembler (plus the linker if linking is done). The output looks like this:

            # cc1 0.12 0.01
            # as 0.00 0.01

    The first number on each line is the "user time", that is time spent executing the program itself. The second number is "system time", time spent executing operating system routines on behalf of the program. Both numbers are in seconds.

-fvar-tracking
    Run variable tracking pass. It computes where variables are stored at each position in code. Better debugging information is then generated (if the debugging information format supports this information).

    It is enabled by default when compiling with optimization (-Os, -O, -O2, -Oz (APPLE ONLY), ...), debugging information (-g) and the debug info format supports it.

-print-file-name=library
    Print the full absolute name of the library file library that would be used when linking---and don't do anything else. With this option, GCC does not compile or link anything; it just prints the file name.

-print-multi-directory
    Print the directory name corresponding to the multilib selected by any other switches present in the command line. This directory is supposed to exist in GCC_EXEC_PREFIX.

-print-multi-lib
    Print the mapping from multilib directory names to compiler switches that enable them. The directory name is separated from the switches by ;, and each switch starts with an @} instead of the @samp{-, without spaces between multiple switches. This is supposed to ease shell-processing.

-print-prog-name=program
    Like -print-file-name, but searches for a program such as cpp.

-print-libgcc-file-name
    Same as -print-file-name=libgcc.a.

    This is useful when you use -nostdlib or -nodefaultlibs but you do want to link with libgcc.a. You can do

            gcc -nostdlib <files>... `gcc -print-libgcc-file-name`

-print-search-dirs
    Print the name of the configured installation directory and a list of program and library directories gcc will search---and don't do anything else.

    This is useful when gcc prints the error message installation problem, cannot exec cpp0: No such file or directory. To resolve this you either need to put cpp0 and the other compiler components where gcc expects to find them, or you can set the environment variable GCC_EXEC_PREFIX to the directory where you installed them. Don't forget the trailing /.

-dumpmachine
    Print the compiler's target machine (for example, i686-pc-linux-gnu)---and don't do anything else.

-dumpversion
    Print the compiler version (for example, 3.0)---and don't do anything else.

-dumpspecs
    Print the compiler's built-in specs---and don't do anything else. (This is used when GCC itself is being built.)

-feliminate-unused-debug-types
    Normally, when producing DWARF2 output, GCC will emit debugging information for all types declared in a compilation unit, regardless of whether or not they are actually used in that compilation unit. Sometimes this is useful, such as if, in the debugger, you want to cast a value to a type that is not actually used in your program (but is declared). More often, however, this results in a significant amount of wasted space. With this option, GCC will avoid producing debug symbol output for types that are nowhere used in the source file being compiled.

  Options That Control Optimization
These options control various sorts of optimizations.

Without any optimization option, the compiler's goal is to reduce the cost of compilation and to make debugging produce the expected results. Statements are independent: if you stop the program with a breakpoint between statements, you can then assign a new value to any variable or change the program counter to any other statement in the function and get exactly the results you would expect from the source code.

Turning on optimization flags makes the compiler attempt to improve the performance and/or code size at the expense of compilation time and possibly the ability to debug the program.

The compiler performs optimization based on the knowledge it has of the program. Optimization levels -O and above, in particular, enable unit-at-a-time mode, which allows the compiler to consider information gained from later functions in the file when compiling a function. Compiling multiple files at once to a single output file in unit-at-a-time mode allows the compiler to use information gained from all of the files when compiling each of them.

Not all optimizations are controlled directly by a flag. Only optimizations that have a flag are listed.

-O
-O1 Optimize. Optimizing compilation takes somewhat more time, and a lot more memory for a large function.

    With -O, the compiler tries to reduce code size and execution time, without performing any optimizations that take a great deal of compilation time.

    -O turns on the following optimization flags: -fdefer-pop -fdelayed-branch -fguess-branch-probability -fcprop-registers -fif-conversion -fif-conversion2 -ftree-ccp -ftree-dce -ftree-dominator-opts -ftree-dse -ftree-ter -ftree-lrs -ftree-sra -ftree-copyrename -ftree-fre -ftree-ch -funit-at-a-time -fmerge-constants

    -O also turns on -fomit-frame-pointer on machines where doing so does not interfere with debugging.

-O2 Optimize even more. GCC performs nearly all supported optimizations that do not involve a space-speed tradeoff. The compiler does not perform loop unrolling or function inlining when you specify -O2. As compared to -O, this option increases both compilation time and the performance of the generated code.

    -O2 turns on all optimization flags specified by -O. It also turns on the following optimization flags: -fthread-jumps -fcrossjumping -foptimize-sibling-calls -fcse-follow-jumps -fcse-skip-blocks -fgcse -fgcse-lm -fexpensive-optimizations -frerun-cse-after-loop -fcaller-saves -fpeephole2 -fschedule-insns -fschedule-insns2 -fsched-interblock -fsched-spec -fregmove -fstrict-aliasing -fstrict-overflow -fdelete-null-pointer-checks -freorder-blocks -freorder-functions -falign-functions -falign-jumps -falign-loops -falign-labels -ftree-vrp -ftree-pre

    Please note the warning under -fgcse about invoking -O2 on programs that use computed gotos.

    -O2 doesn't turn on -ftree-vrp for the Ada compiler. This option must be explicitly specified on the command line to be enabled for the Ada compiler.

    In Apple's version of GCC, -fstrict-aliasing, -freorder-blocks, and -fsched-interblock are disabled by default when optimizing.

-O3 Optimize yet more. -O3 turns on all optimizations specified by -O2 and also turns on the -finline-functions, -funswitch-loops and -fgcse-after-reload options.

-flto
    Enable LLVM Link Time Optimization.

-O4 Enable LLVM Link Time Optimization. -O4 turns on all LLVM compile time optimizations specified by -O2.

-O0 Do not optimize. This is the default.

-fast
    Optimize for maximum performance. -fast changes the overall optimization strategy of GCC in order to produce the fastest possible running code for PPC7450 and G5 architectures. By default, -fast optimizes for G5. Programs optimized for G5 will not run on PPC7450. To optimize for PPC7450, add -mcpu=7450 on command line.

    -fast currently enables the following optimization flags (for G5 and PPC7450). These flags may change in the future. You cannot override any of these options if you use -fast except by setting -mcpu=7450 (or -fPIC, see below).

    -O3 -falign-loops-max-skip=15 -falign-jumps-max-skip=15 -falign-loops=16 -falign-jumps=16 -falign-functions=16 -malign-natural (except when -fastf is specified) -ffast-math -fstrict-aliasing -funroll-loops -ftree-loop-linear -ftree-loop-memset -mcpu=G5 -mpowerpc-gpopt -mtune=G5 (unless -mtune=G4 is specified). -fsched-interblock -fgcse-sm -mpowerpc64

    To build shared libraries with -fast, specify -fPIC on the command line as -fast turns on -mdynamic-no-pic otherwise.

    Important notes: -ffast-math results in code that is not necessarily IEEE-compliant. -fstrict-aliasing is highly likely to break non-standard-compliant programs. -malign-natural only works properly if the entire program is compiled with it, and none of the standard headers/libraries contain any code that changes alignment when this option is used.

    On Intel target, -fast currently enables the following optimization flags:

    -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fstrict-aliasing -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -fno-tree-pre -falign-loops

    All choices of flags enabled by -fast are subject to change without notice.

-Os Optimize for size, but not at the expense of speed. -Os enables all -O2 optimizations that do not typically increase code size. However, instructions are chosen for best performance, regardless of size. To optimize solely for size on Darwin, use -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

    The following options are set for -O2, but are disabled under -Os: -falign-functions -falign-jumps -falign-loops -falign-labels -freorder-blocks -freorder-blocks-and-partition -fprefetch-loop-arrays -ftree-vect-loop-version

    When optimizing with -Os or -Oz (APPLE ONLY) on Darwin, any function up to 30 "estimated insns" in size will be considered for inlining. When compiling C and Objective-C sourcefiles with -Os or -Oz on Darwin, functions explictly marked with the "inline" keyword up to 450 "estimated insns" in size will be considered for inlining. When compiling for Apple POWERPC targets, -Os and -Oz (APPLE ONLY) disable use of the string instructions even though they would usually be smaller, because the kernel can't emulate them correctly in some rare cases. This behavior is not portable to any other gcc environment, and will not affect most programs at all. If you really want the string instructions, use -mstring.

-Oz (APPLE ONLY) Optimize for size, regardless of performance. -Oz enables the same optimization flags that -Os uses, but -Oz also enables other optimizations intended solely to reduce code size. In particular, instructions that encode into fewer bytes are preferred over longer instructions that execute in fewer cycles. -Oz on Darwin is very similar to -Os in FSF distributions of GCC. -Oz employs the same inlining limits and avoids string instructions just like -Os.

    If you use multiple -O options, with or without level numbers, the last such option is the one that is effective.

Options of the form -fflag specify machine-independent flags. Most flags have both positive and negative forms; the negative form of -ffoo would be -fno-foo. In the table below, only one of the forms is listed---the one you typically will use. You can figure out the other form by either removing no- or adding it.

The following options control specific optimizations. They are either activated by -O options or are related to ones that are. You can use the following flags in the rare cases when "fine-tuning" of optimizations to be performed is desired.

-fno-default-inline
    Do not make member functions inline by default merely because they are defined inside the class scope (C++ only). Otherwise, when you specify -O, member functions defined inside class scope are compiled inline by default; i.e., you don't need to add inline in front of the member function name.

-fno-defer-pop
    Always pop the arguments to each function call as soon as that function returns. For machines which must pop arguments after a function call, the compiler normally lets arguments accumulate on the stack for several function calls and pops them all at once.

    Disabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fforce-mem
    Force memory operands to be copied into registers before doing arithmetic on them. This produces better code by making all memory references potential common subexpressions. When they are not common subexpressions, instruction combination should eliminate the separate register-load. This option is now a nop and will be removed in 4.3.

-fforce-addr
    Force memory address constants to be copied into registers before doing arithmetic on them.

-fomit-frame-pointer
    Don't keep the frame pointer in a register for functions that don't need one. This avoids the instructions to save, set up and restore frame pointers; it also makes an extra register available in many functions. It also makes debugging impossible on some machines.

    On some machines, such as the VAX, this flag has no effect, because the standard calling sequence automatically handles the frame pointer and nothing is saved by pretending it doesn't exist. The machine-description macro "FRAME_POINTER_REQUIRED" controls whether a target machine supports this flag.

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-foptimize-sibling-calls
    Optimize sibling and tail recursive calls.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fno-inline
    Don't pay attention to the "inline" keyword. Normally this option is used to keep the compiler from expanding any functions inline. Note that if you are not optimizing, no functions can be expanded inline.

-finline-functions
    Integrate all simple functions into their callers. The compiler heuristically decides which functions are simple enough to be worth integrating in this way.

    If all calls to a given function are integrated, and the function is declared "static", then the function is normally not output as assembler code in its own right.

    Enabled at level -O3.

-finline-functions-called-once
    Consider all "static" functions called once for inlining into their caller even if they are not marked "inline". If a call to a given function is integrated, then the function is not output as assembler code in its own right.

    Enabled if -funit-at-a-time is enabled.

-fearly-inlining
    Inline functions marked by "always_inline" and functions whose body seems smaller than the function call overhead early before doing -fprofile-generate instrumentation and real inlining pass. Doing so makes profiling significantly cheaper and usually inlining faster on programs having large chains of nested wrapper functions.

    Enabled by default.

-finline-limit=n
    By default, GCC limits the size of functions that can be inlined. This flag allows the control of this limit for functions that are explicitly marked as inline (i.e., marked with the inline keyword or defined within the class definition in c++). n is the size of functions that can be inlined in number of pseudo instructions (not counting parameter handling). The default value of n is 600. Increasing this value can result in more inlined code at the cost of compilation time and memory consumption. Decreasing usually makes the compilation faster and less code will be inlined (which presumably means slower programs). This option is particularly useful for programs that use inlining heavily such as those based on recursive templates with C++.

    Inlining is actually controlled by a number of parameters, which may be specified individually by using --param name=value. The -finline-limit=n option sets some of these parameters as follows:

    max-inline-insns-single
         is set to I<n>/2.

    max-inline-insns-auto
         is set to I<n>/2.

    min-inline-insns
         is set to 130 or I<n>/4, whichever is smaller.

    max-inline-insns-rtl
         is set to I<n>.

    See below for a documentation of the individual parameters controlling inlining.

    Note: pseudo instruction represents, in this particular context, an abstract measurement of function's size. In no way does it represent a count of assembly instructions and as such its exact meaning might change from one release to an another. This option has no effect in llvm-gcc. The always_inline and noinline parameters are honored, but none of the other inlining parameters have any effect; there is no specific user control on the amount of inlining done. The compiler will do less inlining at -O2 or -Os than at -O3.

-fkeep-inline-functions
    In C, emit "static" functions that are declared "inline" into the object file, even if the function has been inlined into all of its callers. This switch does not affect functions using the "extern inline" extension in GNU C. In C++, emit any and all inline functions into the object file.

-fkeep-static-consts
    Emit variables declared "static const" when optimization isn't turned on, even if the variables aren't referenced.

    GCC enables this option by default. If you want to force the compiler to check if the variable was referenced, regardless of whether or not optimization is turned on, use the -fno-keep-static-consts option.

-flocal-alloc
    (APPLE ONLY) Enable the local (intra-basic-block) register allocator.

    GCC enables this option by default. If you want to force the compiler to supress register allocation within a basic block, use the -fno-local-alloc option. This option cannot be disabled with -O0, for correctness reasons.

-fmerge-constants
    Attempt to merge identical constants (string constants and floating point constants) across compilation units.

    This option is the default for optimized compilation if the assembler and linker support it. Use -fno-merge-constants to inhibit this behavior.

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fmerge-all-constants
    Attempt to merge identical constants and identical variables.

    This option implies -fmerge-constants. In addition to -fmerge-constants this considers e.g. even constant initialized arrays or initialized constant variables with integral or floating point types. Languages like C or C++ require each non-automatic variable to have distinct location, so using this option will result in non-conforming behavior.

-fmodulo-sched
    Perform swing modulo scheduling immediately before the first scheduling pass. This pass looks at innermost loops and reorders their instructions by overlapping different iterations.

-fno-branch-count-reg
    Do not use "decrement and branch" instructions on a count register, but instead generate a sequence of instructions that decrement a register, compare it against zero, then branch based upon the result. This option is only meaningful on architectures that support such instructions, which include x86, PowerPC, IA-64 and S/390.

    The default is -fbranch-count-reg.

-fno-function-cse
    Do not put function addresses in registers; make each instruction that calls a constant function contain the function's address explicitly.

    This option results in less efficient code, but some strange hacks that alter the assembler output may be confused by the optimizations performed when this option is not used.

    The default is -ffunction-cse

-fno-zero-initialized-in-bss
    If the target supports a BSS section, GCC by default puts variables that are initialized to zero into BSS. This can save space in the resulting code.

    This option turns off this behavior because some programs explicitly rely on variables going to the data section. E.g., so that the resulting executable can find the beginning of that section and/or make assumptions based on that.

    The default is -fzero-initialized-in-bss.

-fbounds-check
    For front-ends that support it, generate additional code to check that indices used to access arrays are within the declared range. This is currently only supported by the Java and Fortran front-ends, where this option defaults to true and false respectively.

-fmudflap -fmudflapth -fmudflapir
    For front-ends that support it (C and C++), instrument all risky pointer/array dereferencing operations, some standard library string/heap functions, and some other associated constructs with range/validity tests. Modules so instrumented should be immune to buffer overflows, invalid heap use, and some other classes of C/C++ programming errors. The instrumentation relies on a separate runtime library (libmudflap), which will be linked into a program if -fmudflap is given at link time. Run-time behavior of the instrumented program is controlled by the MUDFLAP_OPTIONS environment variable. See "env MUDFLAP_OPTIONS=-help a.out" for its options.

    Use -fmudflapth instead of -fmudflap to compile and to link if your program is multi-threaded. Use -fmudflapir, in addition to -fmudflap or -fmudflapth, if instrumentation should ignore pointer reads. This produces less instrumentation (and therefore faster execution) and still provides some protection against outright memory corrupting writes, but allows erroneously read data to propagate within a program.

-fthread-jumps
    Perform optimizations where we check to see if a jump branches to a location where another comparison subsumed by the first is found. If so, the first branch is redirected to either the destination of the second branch or a point immediately following it, depending on whether the condition is known to be true or false.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fcse-follow-jumps
    In common subexpression elimination, scan through jump instructions when the target of the jump is not reached by any other path. For example, when CSE encounters an "if" statement with an "else" clause, CSE will follow the jump when the condition tested is false.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fcse-skip-blocks
    This is similar to -fcse-follow-jumps, but causes CSE to follow jumps which conditionally skip over blocks. When CSE encounters a simple "if" statement with no else clause, -fcse-skip-blocks causes CSE to follow the jump around the body of the "if".

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-frerun-cse-after-loop
    Re-run common subexpression elimination after loop optimizations has been performed.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fgcse
    Perform a global common subexpression elimination pass. This pass also performs global constant and copy propagation.

    Note: When compiling a program using computed gotos, a GCC extension, you may get better runtime performance if you disable the global common subexpression elimination pass by adding -fno-gcse to the command line.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fgcse-lm
    When -fgcse-lm is enabled, global common subexpression elimination will attempt to move loads which are only killed by stores into themselves. This allows a loop containing a load/store sequence to be changed to a load outside the loop, and a copy/store within the loop.

    Enabled by default when gcse is enabled.

-fgcse-sm
    When -fgcse-sm is enabled, a store motion pass is run after global common subexpression elimination. This pass will attempt to move stores out of loops. When used in conjunction with -fgcse-lm, loops containing a load/store sequence can be changed to a load before the loop and a store after the loop.

    Not enabled at any optimization level.

-fgcse-las
    When -fgcse-las is enabled, the global common subexpression elimination pass eliminates redundant loads that come after stores to the same memory location (both partial and full redundancies).

    Not enabled at any optimization level.

-fgcse-after-reload
    When -fgcse-after-reload is enabled, a redundant load elimination pass is performed after reload. The purpose of this pass is to cleanup redundant spilling.

-funsafe-loop-optimizations
    If given, the loop optimizer will assume that loop indices do not overflow, and that the loops with nontrivial exit condition are not infinite. This enables a wider range of loop optimizations even if the loop optimizer itself cannot prove that these assumptions are valid. Using -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations, the compiler will warn you if it finds this kind of loop.

-fcrossjumping
    Perform cross-jumping transformation. This transformation unifies equivalent code and save code size. The resulting code may or may not perform better than without cross-jumping.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fif-conversion
    Attempt to transform conditional jumps into branch-less equivalents. This include use of conditional moves, min, max, set flags and abs instructions, and some tricks doable by standard arithmetics. The use of conditional execution on chips where it is available is controlled by "if-conversion2".

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fif-conversion2
    Use conditional execution (where available) to transform conditional jumps into branch-less equivalents.

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fdelete-null-pointer-checks
    Use global dataflow analysis to identify and eliminate useless checks for null pointers. The compiler assumes that dereferencing a null pointer would have halted the program. If a pointer is checked after it has already been dereferenced, it cannot be null.

    In some environments, this assumption is not true, and programs can safely dereference null pointers. Use -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks to disable this optimization for programs which depend on that behavior.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fexpensive-optimizations
    Perform a number of minor optimizations that are relatively expensive.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-foptimize-register-move
-fregmove
    Attempt to reassign register numbers in move instructions and as operands of other simple instructions in order to maximize the amount of register tying. This is especially helpful on machines with two-operand instructions.

    Note -fregmove and -foptimize-register-move are the same optimization.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fdelayed-branch
    If supported for the target machine, attempt to reorder instructions to exploit instruction slots available after delayed branch instructions.

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fschedule-insns
    If supported for the target machine, attempt to reorder instructions to eliminate execution stalls due to required data being unavailable. This helps machines that have slow floating point or memory load instructions by allowing other instructions to be issued until the result of the load or floating point instruction is required.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz for PPC targets; ignored for x86 targets (APPLE ONLY).

-fschedule-insns2
    Similar to -fschedule-insns, but requests an additional pass of instruction scheduling after register allocation has been done. This is especially useful on machines with a relatively small number of registers and where memory load instructions take more than one cycle.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz for PPC targets; ignored for x86 targets (APPLE ONLY).

-fno-sched-interblock
    Don't schedule instructions across basic blocks. This is normally enabled by default when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher.

-fno-sched-spec
    Don't allow speculative motion of non-load instructions. This is normally enabled by default when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher.

-fsched-spec-load
    Allow speculative motion of some load instructions. This only makes sense when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher.

-fsched-spec-load-dangerous
    Allow speculative motion of more load instructions. This only makes sense when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher.

-fsched-stalled-insns=n
    Define how many insns (if any) can be moved prematurely from the queue of stalled insns into the ready list, during the second scheduling pass.

-fsched-stalled-insns-dep=n
    Define how many insn groups (cycles) will be examined for a dependency on a stalled insn that is candidate for premature removal from the queue of stalled insns. Has an effect only during the second scheduling pass, and only if -fsched-stalled-insns is used and its value is not zero.

-fsched2-use-superblocks
    When scheduling after register allocation, do use superblock scheduling algorithm. Superblock scheduling allows motion across basic block boundaries resulting on faster schedules. This option is experimental, as not all machine descriptions used by GCC model the CPU closely enough to avoid unreliable results from the algorithm.

    This only makes sense when scheduling after register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher.

-fsched2-use-traces
    Use -fsched2-use-superblocks algorithm when scheduling after register allocation and additionally perform code duplication in order to increase the size of superblocks using tracer pass. See -ftracer for details on trace formation.

    This mode should produce faster but significantly longer programs. Also without -fbranch-probabilities the traces constructed may not match the reality and hurt the performance. This only makes sense when scheduling after register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher.

-fsee
    Eliminates redundant extension instructions and move the non redundant ones to optimal placement using LCM.

-freschedule-modulo-scheduled-loops
    The modulo scheduling comes before the traditional scheduling, if a loop was modulo scheduled we may want to prevent the later scheduling passes from changing its schedule, we use this option to control that.

-fcaller-saves
    Enable values to be allocated in registers that will be clobbered by function calls, by emitting extra instructions to save and restore the registers around such calls. Such allocation is done only when it seems to result in better code than would otherwise be produced.

    This option is always enabled by default on certain machines, usually those which have no call-preserved registers to use instead.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-ftree-pre
    Perform Partial Redundancy Elimination (PRE) on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and -O3.

-ftree-fre
    Perform Full Redundancy Elimination (FRE) on trees. The difference between FRE and PRE is that FRE only considers expressions that are computed on all paths leading to the redundant computation. This analysis faster than PRE, though it exposes fewer redundancies. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-copy-prop
    Perform copy propagation on trees. This pass eliminates unnecessary copy operations. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-store-copy-prop
    Perform copy propagation of memory loads and stores. This pass eliminates unnecessary copy operations in memory references (structures, global variables, arrays, etc). This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher.

-ftree-salias
    Perform structural alias analysis on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-fipa-pta
    Perform interprocedural pointer analysis.

-ftree-sink
    Perform forward store motion on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-ccp
    Perform sparse conditional constant propagation (CCP) on trees. This pass only operates on local scalar variables and is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-store-ccp
    Perform sparse conditional constant propagation (CCP) on trees. This pass operates on both local scalar variables and memory stores and loads (global variables, structures, arrays, etc). This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher.

-ftree-dce
    Perform dead code elimination (DCE) on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-dominator-opts
    Perform a variety of simple scalar cleanups (constant/copy propagation, redundancy elimination, range propagation and expression simplification) based on a dominator tree traversal. This also performs jump threading (to reduce jumps to jumps). This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-ch
    Perform loop header copying on trees. This is beneficial since it increases effectiveness of code motion optimizations. It also saves one jump. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. It is not enabled for -Os or -Oz (APPLE ONLY), since it usually increases code size.

-ftree-loop-optimize
    Perform loop optimizations on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-loop-linear
    Perform linear loop transformations on tree. This flag can improve cache performance and allow further loop optimizations to take place. This flag is known to have bugs that cause incorrect code to be generated in some rare cases. Note this flag is included in -fast.

-ftree-loop-im
    Perform loop invariant motion on trees. This pass moves only invariants that would be hard to handle at RTL level (function calls, operations that expand to nontrivial sequences of insns). With -funswitch-loops it also moves operands of conditions that are invariant out of the loop, so that we can use just trivial invariantness analysis in loop unswitching. The pass also includes store motion.

-ftree-loop-ivcanon
    Create a canonical counter for number of iterations in the loop for that determining number of iterations requires complicated analysis. Later optimizations then may determine the number easily. Useful especially in connection with unrolling.

-fivopts
    Perform induction variable optimizations (strength reduction, induction variable merging and induction variable elimination) on trees.

-ftree-sra
    Perform scalar replacement of aggregates. This pass replaces structure references with scalars to prevent committing structures to memory too early. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-copyrename
    Perform copy renaming on trees. This pass attempts to rename compiler temporaries to other variables at copy locations, usually resulting in variable names which more closely resemble the original variables. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-ter
    Perform temporary expression replacement during the SSA->normal phase. Single use/single def temporaries are replaced at their use location with their defining expression. This results in non-GIMPLE code, but gives the expanders much more complex trees to work on resulting in better RTL generation. This is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-lrs
    Perform live range splitting during the SSA->normal phase. Distinct live ranges of a variable are split into unique variables, allowing for better optimization later. This is enabled by default at -O and higher.

-ftree-vectorize
    Perform loop vectorization on trees.

    In Apple's version of GCC, -fstrict-aliasing is enabled by default when loop vectorization is enabled. See -fstrict-aliasing document for more information.

-ftree-vect-loop-version
    Perform loop versioning when doing loop vectorization on trees. When a loop appears to be vectorizable except that data alignment or data dependence cannot be determined at compile time then vectorized and non-vectorized versions of the loop are generated along with runtime checks for alignment or dependence to control which version is executed. This option is enabled by default except at level -Os where it is disabled.

-ftree-vrp
    Perform Value Range Propagation on trees. This is similar to the constant propagation pass, but instead of values, ranges of values are propagated. This allows the optimizers to remove unnecessary range checks like array bound checks and null pointer checks. This is enabled by default at -O2 and higher. Null pointer check elimination is only done if -fdelete-null-pointer-checks is enabled.

-ftracer
    Perform tail duplication to enlarge superblock size. This transformation simplifies the control flow of the function allowing other optimizations to do better job.

-funroll-loops
    Unroll loops whose number of iterations can be determined at compile time or upon entry to the loop. -funroll-loops implies -frerun-cse-after-loop. This option makes code larger, and may or may not make it run faster.

-funroll-all-loops
    Unroll all loops, even if their number of iterations is uncertain when the loop is entered. This usually makes programs run more slowly. -funroll-all-loops implies the same options as -funroll-loops,

-fsplit-ivs-in-unroller
    Enables expressing of values of induction variables in later iterations of the unrolled loop using the value in the first iteration. This breaks long dependency chains, thus improving efficiency of the scheduling passes.

    Combination of -fweb and CSE is often sufficient to obtain the same effect. However in cases the loop body is more complicated than a single basic block, this is not reliable. It also does not work at all on some of the architectures due to restrictions in the CSE pass.

    This optimization is enabled by default.

-fvariable-expansion-in-unroller
    With this option, the compiler will create multiple copies of some local variables when unrolling a loop which can result in superior code.

-fprefetch-loop-arrays
    If supported by the target machine, generate instructions to prefetch memory to improve the performance of loops that access large arrays.

    This option may generate better or worse code; results are highly dependent on the structure of loops within the source code.

    Disabled at levels -Os and -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fno-peephole
-fno-peephole2
    Disable any machine-specific peephole optimizations. The difference between -fno-peephole and -fno-peephole2 is in how they are implemented in the compiler; some targets use one, some use the other, a few use both.

    -fpeephole is enabled by default. -fpeephole2 enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fno-guess-branch-probability
    Do not guess branch probabilities using heuristics.

    GCC will use heuristics to guess branch probabilities if they are not provided by profiling feedback (-fprofile-arcs). These heuristics are based on the control flow graph. If some branch probabilities are specified by __builtin_expect, then the heuristics will be used to guess branch probabilities for the rest of the control flow graph, taking the __builtin_expect info into account. The interactions between the heuristics and __builtin_expect can be complex, and in some cases, it may be useful to disable the heuristics so that the effects of __builtin_expect are easier to understand.

    The default is -fguess-branch-probability at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-freorder-blocks
    Reorder basic blocks in the compiled function in order to reduce number of taken branches and improve code locality.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3.

-freorder-blocks-and-partition
    In addition to reordering basic blocks in the compiled function, in order to reduce number of taken branches, partitions hot and cold basic blocks into separate sections of the assembly and .o files, to improve paging and cache locality performance.

    This optimization is automatically turned off in the presence of exception handling, for linkonce sections, for functions with a user-defined section attribute and on any architecture that does not support named sections.

-freorder-functions
    Reorder functions in the object file in order to improve code locality. This is implemented by using special subsections ".text.hot" for most frequently executed functions and ".text.unlikely" for unlikely executed functions. Reordering is done by the linker so object file format must support named sections and linker must place them in a reasonable way.

    Also profile feedback must be available in to make this option effective. See -fprofile-arcs for details.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fstrict-aliasing
    Allows the compiler to assume the strictest aliasing rules applicable to the language being compiled. For C (and C++), this activates optimizations based on the type of expressions. In particular, an object of one type is assumed never to reside at the same address as an object of a different type, unless the types are almost the same. For example, an "unsigned int" can alias an "int", but not a "void*" or a "double". A character type may alias any other type.

    Pay special attention to code like this:

            union a_union {
              int i;
              double d;
            };

            int f() {
              a_union t;
              t.d = 3.0;
              return t.i;
            }

    The practice of reading from a different union member than the one most recently written to (called "type-punning") is common. Even with -fstrict-aliasing, type-punning is allowed, provided the memory is accessed through the union type. So, the code above will work as expected. However, this code might not:

            int f() {
              a_union t;
              int* ip;
              t.d = 3.0;
              ip = &t.i;
              return *ip;
            }

    Every language that wishes to perform language-specific alias analysis should define a function that computes, given an "tree" node, an alias set for the node. Nodes in different alias sets are not allowed to alias. For an example, see the C front-end function "c_get_alias_set".

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fstrict-overflow
    Allow the compiler to assume strict signed overflow rules, depending on the language being compiled. For C (and C++) this means that overflow when doing arithmetic with signed numbers is undefined, which means that the compiler may assume that it will not happen. This permits various optimizations. For example, the compiler will assume that an expression like "i + 10 > i" will always be true for signed "i". This assumption is only valid if signed overflow is undefined, as the expression is false if "i + 10" overflows when using twos complement arithmetic. When this option is in effect any attempt to determine whether an operation on signed numbers will overflow must be written carefully to not actually involve overflow.

    See also the -fwrapv option. Using -fwrapv means that signed overflow is fully defined: it wraps. When -fwrapv is used, there is no difference between -fstrict-overflow and -fno-strict-overflow. With -fwrapv certain types of overflow are permitted. For example, if the compiler gets an overflow when doing arithmetic on constants, the overflowed value can still be used with -fwrapv, but not otherwise.

    The -fstrict-overflow option is enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os.

-falign-functions
-falign-functions=n
    Align the start of functions to the next power-of-two greater than n, skipping up to n bytes. For instance, -falign-functions=32 aligns functions to the next 32-byte boundary, but -falign-functions=24 would align to the next 32-byte boundary only if this can be done by skipping 23 bytes or less.

    -fno-align-functions and -falign-functions=1 are equivalent and mean that functions will not be aligned.

    Some assemblers only support this flag when n is a power of two; in that case, it is rounded up.

    If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3.

-falign-labels
-falign-labels=n
    Align all branch targets to a power-of-two boundary, skipping up to n bytes like -falign-functions. This option can easily make code slower, because it must insert dummy operations for when the branch target is reached in the usual flow of the code.

    -fno-align-labels and -falign-labels=1 are equivalent and mean that labels will not be aligned.

    If -falign-loops or -falign-jumps are applicable and are greater than this value, then their values are used instead.

    If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default which is very likely to be 1, meaning no alignment.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3.

-falign-loops-max-skip
-falign-loops-max-skip=n
    Align loops to a power-of-two boundary, but do not skip more than n bytes to do so.

-falign-loops
-falign-loops=n
    Align loops to a power-of-two boundary, skipping up to n bytes like -falign-functions. The hope is that the loop will be executed many times, which will make up for any execution of the dummy operations.

    -fno-align-loops and -falign-loops=1 are equivalent and mean that loops will not be aligned.

    If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3.

-falign-jumps
-falign-jumps=n
    Align branch targets to a power-of-two boundary, for branch targets where the targets can only be reached by jumping, skipping up to n bytes like -falign-functions. In this case, no dummy operations need be executed.

-falign-jumps-max-skip
-falign-jumps-max-skip=n
    Align branch targets to a power-of-two boundary, but do not skip more than n bytes to do so.

    -fno-align-jumps and -falign-jumps=1 are equivalent and mean that loops will not be aligned.

    If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default.

    Enabled at levels -O2, -O3.

-funit-at-a-time
    Parse the whole compilation unit before starting to produce code. This allows some extra optimizations to take place but consumes more memory (in general). There are some compatibility issues with unit-at-a-time mode:

    •   enabling unit-at-a-time mode may change the order in which functions, variables, and top-level "asm" statements are emitted, and will likely break code relying on some particular ordering. The majority of such top-level "asm" statements, though, can be replaced by "section" attributes. The fno-toplevel-reorder option may be used to keep the ordering used in the input file, at the cost of some optimizations.

    •   unit-at-a-time mode removes unreferenced static variables and functions. This may result in undefined references when an "asm" statement refers directly to variables or functions that are otherwise unused. In that case either the variable/function shall be listed as an operand of the "asm" statement operand or, in the case of top-level "asm" statements the attribute "used" shall be used on the declaration.

    •   Static functions now can use non-standard passing conventions that may break "asm" statements calling functions directly. Again, attribute "used" will prevent this behavior.

    As a temporary workaround, -fno-unit-at-a-time can be used, but this scheme may not be supported by future releases of GCC.

    Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os.

-fno-toplevel-reorder
    Do not reorder top-level functions, variables, and "asm" statements. Output them in the same order that they appear in the input file. When this option is used, unreferenced static variables will not be removed. This option is intended to support existing code which relies on a particular ordering. For new code, it is better to use attributes.

-fweb
    Constructs webs as commonly used for register allocation purposes and assign each web individual pseudo register. This allows the register allocation pass to operate on pseudos directly, but also strengthens several other optimization passes, such as CSE, loop optimizer and trivial dead code remover. It can, however, make debugging impossible, since variables will no longer stay in a "home register".

    Enabled by default with -funroll-loops.

-fwhole-program
    Assume that the current compilation unit represents whole program being compiled. All public functions and variables with the exception of "main" and those merged by attribute "externally_visible" become static functions and in a affect gets more aggressively optimized by interprocedural optimizers. While this option is equivalent to proper use of "static" keyword for programs consisting of single file, in combination with option --combine this flag can be used to compile most of smaller scale C programs since the functions and variables become local for the whole combined compilation unit, not for the single source file itself.

-fno-cprop-registers
    After register allocation and post-register allocation instruction splitting, we perform a copy-propagation pass to try to reduce scheduling dependencies and occasionally eliminate the copy.

    Disabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, -Oz (APPLE ONLY).

-fprofile-generate
    Enable options usually used for instrumenting application to produce profile useful for later recompilation with profile feedback based optimization. You must use -fprofile-generate both when compiling and when linking your program.

    The following options are enabled: "-fprofile-arcs", "-fprofile-values", "-fvpt".

-fprofile-use
    Enable profile feedback directed optimizations, and optimizations generally profitable only with profile feedback available.

    The following options are enabled: "-fbranch-probabilities", "-fvpt", "-funroll-loops", "-fpeel-loops", "-ftracer"

The following options control compiler behavior regarding floating point arithmetic. These options trade off between speed and correctness. All must be specifically enabled.

-ffloat-store
    Do not store floating point variables in registers, and inhibit other options that might change whether a floating point value is taken from a register or memory.

    This option prevents undesirable excess precision on machines such as the 68000 where the floating registers (of the 68881) keep more precision than a "double" is supposed to have. Similarly for the x86 architecture. For most programs, the excess precision does only good, but a few programs rely on the precise definition of IEEE floating point. Use -ffloat-store for such programs, after modifying them to store all pertinent intermediate computations into variables.

-ffast-math
    Sets -fno-math-errno, -funsafe-math-optimizations, -fno-trapping-math, -ffinite-math-only, -fno-rounding-math, -fno-signaling-nans and fcx-limited-range.

    This option causes the preprocessor macro "__FAST_MATH__" to be defined.

    This option should never be turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs which depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions.

-fno-math-errno
    Do not set ERRNO after calling math functions that are executed with a single instruction, e.g., sqrt. A program that relies on IEEE exceptions for math error handling may want to use this flag for speed while maintaining IEEE arithmetic compatibility.

    (APPLE ONLY) The Darwin math libraries never set errno, so there is no point in having the compiler generate code that assumes they might. Therefore, the default is -fno-math-errno on Darwin.

    On Darwin systems, the math library never sets "errno". There is therefore no reason for the compiler to consider the possibility that it might, and -fno-math-errno is the default.

-funsafe-math-optimizations
    Allow optimizations for floating-point arithmetic that (a) assume that arguments and results are valid and (b) may violate IEEE or ANSI standards. When used at link-time, it may include libraries or startup files that change the default FPU control word or other similar optimizations.

    This option should never be turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs which depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions.

    The default is -fno-unsafe-math-optimizations.

-ffinite-math-only
    Allow optimizations for floating-point arithmetic that assume that arguments and results are not NaNs or +-Infs.

    This option should never be turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs which depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications.

    The default is -fno-finite-math-only.

-fno-trapping-math
    Compile code assuming that floating-point operations cannot generate user-visible traps. These traps include division by zero, overflow, underflow, inexact result and invalid operation. This option implies -fno-signaling-nans. Setting this option may allow faster code if one relies on "non-stop" IEEE arithmetic, for example.

    This option should never be turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs which depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions.

    The default is -ftrapping-math.

-frounding-math
    Disable transformations and optimizations that assume default floating point rounding behavior. This is round-to-zero for all floating point to integer conversions, and round-to-nearest for all other arithmetic truncations. This option should be specified for programs that change the FP rounding mode dynamically, or that may be executed with a non-default rounding mode. This option disables constant folding of floating point expressions at compile-time (which may be affected by rounding mode) and arithmetic transformations that are unsafe in the presence of sign-dependent rounding modes.

    The default is -fno-rounding-math.

    This option is experimental and does not currently guarantee to disable all GCC optimizations that are affected by rounding mode. Future versions of GCC may provide finer control of this setting using C99's "FENV_ACCESS" pragma. This command line option will be used to specify the default state for "FENV_ACCESS".

-frtl-abstract-sequences
    It is a size optimization method. This option is to find identical sequences of code, which can be turned into pseudo-procedures and then replace all occurrences with calls to the newly created subroutine. It is kind of an opposite of -finline-functions. This optimization runs at RTL level.

-fsignaling-nans
    Compile code assuming that IEEE signaling NaNs may generate user-visible traps during floating-point operations. Setting this option disables optimizations that may change the number of exceptions visible with signaling NaNs. This option implies -ftrapping-math.

    This option causes the preprocessor macro "__SUPPORT_SNAN__" to be defined.

    The default is -fno-signaling-nans.

    This option is experimental and does not currently guarantee to disable all GCC optimizations that affect signaling NaN behavior.

-fsingle-precision-constant
    Treat floating point constant as single precision constant instead of implicitly converting it to double precision constant.

-fcx-limited-range
-fno-cx-limited-range
    When enabled, this option states that a range reduction step is not needed when performing complex division. The default is -fno-cx-limited-range, but is enabled by -ffast-math.

    This option controls the default setting of the ISO C99 "CX_LIMITED_RANGE" pragma. Nevertheless, the option applies to all languages.

The following options control optimizations that may improve performance, but are not enabled by any -O options. This section includes experimental options that may produce broken code.

-fbranch-probabilities
    After running a program compiled with -fprofile-arcs, you can compile it a second time using -fbranch-probabilities, to improve optimizations based on the number of times each branch was taken. When the program compiled with -fprofile-arcs exits it saves arc execution counts to a file called sourcename.gcda for each source file The information in this data file is very dependent on the structure of the generated code, so you must use the same source code and the same optimization options for both compilations.

    With -fbranch-probabilities, GCC puts a REG_BR_PROB note on each JUMP_INSN and CALL_INSN. These can be used to improve optimization. Currently, they are only used in one place: in reorg.c, instead of guessing which path a branch is mostly to take, the REG_BR_PROB values are used to exactly determine which path is taken more often.

-fprofile-values
    If combined with -fprofile-arcs, it adds code so that some data about values of expressions in the program is gathered.

    With -fbranch-probabilities, it reads back the data gathered from profiling values of expressions and adds REG_VALUE_PROFILE notes to instructions for their later usage in optimizations.

    Enabled with -fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use.

-fvpt
    If combined with -fprofile-arcs, it instructs the compiler to add a code to gather information about values of expressions.

    With -fbranch-probabilities, it reads back the data gathered and actually performs the optimizations based on them. Currently the optimizations include specialization of division operation using the knowledge about the value of the denominator.

-frename-registers
    Attempt to avoid false dependencies in scheduled code by making use of registers left over after register allocation. This optimization will most benefit processors with lots of registers. Depending on the debug information format adopted by the target, however, it can make debugging impossible, since variables will no longer stay in a "home register".

    Enabled by default with -funroll-loops.

-ftracer
    Perform tail duplication to enlarge superblock size. This transformation simplifies the control flow of the function allowing other optimizations to do better job.

    Enabled with -fprofile-use.

-funroll-loops
    Unroll loops whose number of iterations can be determined at compile time or upon entry to the loop. -funroll-loops implies -frerun-cse-after-loop, -fweb and -frename-registers. It also turns on complete loop peeling (i.e. complete removal of loops with small constant number of iterations). This option makes code larger, and may or may not make it run faster.

    Enabled with -fprofile-use.

-funroll-all-loops
    Unroll all loops, even if their number of iterations is uncertain when the loop is entered. This usually makes programs run more slowly. -funroll-all-loops implies the same options as -funroll-loops.

-fpeel-loops
    Peels the loops for that there is enough information that they do not roll much (from profile feedback). It also turns on complete loop peeling (i.e. complete removal of loops with small constant number of iterations).

    Enabled with -fprofile-use.

-fmove-loop-invariants
    Enables the loop invariant motion pass in the RTL loop optimizer. Enabled at level -O1

-funswitch-loops
    Move branches with loop invariant conditions out of the loop, with duplicates of the loop on both branches (modified according to result of the condition).

-ffunction-sections
-fdata-sections
    Place each function or data item into its own section in the output file if the target supports arbitrary sections. The name of the function or the name of the data item determines the section's name in the output file.

    Use these options on systems where the linker can perform optimizations to improve locality of reference in the instruction space. Most systems using the ELF object format and SPARC processors running Solaris 2 have linkers with such optimizations. AIX may have these optimizations in the future.

    Only use these options when there are significant benefits from doing so. When you specify these options, the assembler and linker will create larger object and executable files and will also be slower. You will not be able to use "gprof" on all systems if you specify this option and you may have problems with debugging if you specify both this option and -g.

-fbranch-target-load-optimize
    Perform branch target register load optimization before prologue / epilogue threading. The use of target registers can typically be exposed only during reload, thus hoisting loads out of loops and doing inter-block scheduling needs a separate optimization pass.

-fbranch-target-load-optimize2
    Perform branch target register load optimization after prologue / epilogue threading.

-fbtr-bb-exclusive
    When performing branch target register load optimization, don't reuse branch target registers in within any basic block.

-fstack-protector
    Emit extra code to check for buffer overflows, such as stack smashing attacks. This is done by adding a guard variable to functions with vulnerable objects. This includes functions that call alloca, and functions with buffers larger than 8 bytes. The guards are initialized when a function is entered and then checked when the function exits. If a guard check fails, an error message is printed and the program exits.

-fstack-protector-all
    Like -fstack-protector except that all functions are protected.

-fsection-anchors
    Try to reduce the number of symbolic address calculations by using shared "anchor" symbols to address nearby objects. This transformation can help to reduce the number of GOT entries and GOT accesses on some targets.

    For example, the implementation of the following function "foo":

            static int a, b, c;
            int foo (void) { return a + b + c; }

    would usually calculate the addresses of all three variables, but if you compile it with -fsection-anchors, it will access the variables from a common anchor point instead. The effect is similar to the following pseudocode (which isn't valid C):

            int foo (void)
            {
              register int *xr = &x;
              return xr[&a - &x] + xr[&b - &x] + xr[&c - &x];
            }

    Not all targets support this option.

--param name=value
    In some places, GCC uses various constants to control the amount of optimization that is done. For example, GCC will not inline functions that contain more that a certain number of instructions. You can control some of these constants on the command-line using the --param option.

    The names of specific parameters, and the meaning of the values, are tied to the internals of the compiler, and are subject to change without notice in future releases.

    In each case, the value is an integer. The allowable choices for name are given in the following table:

    salias-max-implicit-fields
        The maximum number of fields in a variable without direct structure accesses for which structure aliasing will consider trying to track each field. The default is 5

    salias-max-array-elements
        The maximum number of elements an array can have and its elements still be tracked individually by structure aliasing. The default is 4

    sra-max-structure-size
        The maximum structure size, in bytes, at which the scalar replacement of aggregates (SRA) optimization will perform block copies. The default value, 0, implies that GCC will select the most appropriate size itself.

    sra-field-structure-ratio
        The threshold ratio (as a percentage) between instantiated fields and the complete structure size. We say that if the ratio of the number of bytes in instantiated fields to the number of bytes in the complete structure exceeds this parameter, then block copies are not used. The default is 75.

    max-crossjump-edges
        The maximum number of incoming edges to consider for crossjumping. The algorithm used by -fcrossjumping is O(N^2) in the number of edges incoming to each block. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compile time increase with probably small improvement in executable size.

    min-crossjump-insns
        The minimum number of instructions which must be matched at the end of two blocks before crossjumping will be performed on them. This value is ignored in the case where all instructions in the block being crossjumped from are matched. The default value is 5.

    max-grow-copy-bb-insns
        The maximum code size expansion factor when copying basic blocks instead of jumping. The expansion is relative to a jump instruction. The default value is 8.

    max-goto-duplication-insns
        The maximum number of instructions to duplicate to a block that jumps to a computed goto. To avoid O(N^2) behavior in a number of passes, GCC factors computed gotos early in the compilation process, and unfactors them as late as possible. Only computed jumps at the end of a basic blocks with no more than max-goto-duplication-insns are unfactored. The default value is 8.

    max-delay-slot-insn-search
        The maximum number of instructions to consider when looking for an instruction to fill a delay slot. If more than this arbitrary number of instructions is searched, the time savings from filling the delay slot will be minimal so stop searching. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compile time increase with probably small improvement in executable run time.

    max-delay-slot-live-search
        When trying to fill delay slots, the maximum number of instructions to consider when searching for a block with valid live register information. Increasing this arbitrarily chosen value means more aggressive optimization, increasing the compile time. This parameter should be removed when the delay slot code is rewritten to maintain the control-flow graph.

    max-gcse-memory
        The approximate maximum amount of memory that will be allocated in order to perform the global common subexpression elimination optimization. If more memory than specified is required, the optimization will not be done.

    max-gcse-passes
        The maximum number of passes of GCSE to run. The default is 1.

    max-pending-list-length
        The maximum number of pending dependencies scheduling will allow before flushing the current state and starting over. Large functions with few branches or calls can create excessively large lists which needlessly consume memory and resources.

    max-inline-insns-single
        Several parameters control the tree inliner used in gcc. This number sets the maximum number of instructions (counted in GCC's internal representation) in a single function that the tree inliner will consider for inlining. This only affects functions declared inline and methods implemented in a class declaration (C++). The default value is 450.

    max-inline-insns-auto
        When you use -finline-functions (included in -O3), a lot of functions that would otherwise not be considered for inlining by the compiler will be investigated. To those functions, a different (more restrictive) limit compared to functions declared inline can be applied. The default value is 90.

    large-function-insns
        The limit specifying really large functions. For functions larger than this limit after inlining inlining is constrained by --param large-function-growth. This parameter is useful primarily to avoid extreme compilation time caused by non-linear algorithms used by the backend. This parameter is ignored when -funit-at-a-time is not used. The default value is 2700.

    large-function-growth
        Specifies maximal growth of large function caused by inlining in percents. This parameter is ignored when -funit-at-a-time is not used. The default value is 100 which limits large function growth to 2.0 times the original size.

    large-unit-insns
        The limit specifying large translation unit. Growth caused by inlining of units larger than this limit is limited by --param inline-unit-growth. For small units this might be too tight (consider unit consisting of function A that is inline and B that just calls A three time. If B is small relative to A, the growth of unit is 300\% and yet such inlining is very sane. For very large units consisting of small inlininable functions however the overall unit growth limit is needed to avoid exponential explosion of code size. Thus for smaller units, the size is increased to --param large-unit-insns before applying --param inline-unit-growth. The default is 10000

    inline-unit-growth
        Specifies maximal overall growth of the compilation unit caused by inlining. This parameter is ignored when -funit-at-a-time is not used. The default value is 50 which limits unit growth to 1.5 times the original size.

    max-inline-insns-recursive
    max-inline-insns-recursive-auto
        Specifies maximum number of instructions out-of-line copy of self recursive inline function can grow into by performing recursive inlining.

        For functions declared inline --param max-inline-insns-recursive is taken into account. For function not declared inline, recursive inlining happens only when -finline-functions (included in -O3) is enabled and --param max-inline-insns-recursive-auto is used. The default value is 450.

    max-inline-recursive-depth
    max-inline-recursive-depth-auto
        Specifies maximum recursion depth used by the recursive inlining.

        For functions declared inline --param max-inline-recursive-depth is taken into account. For function not declared inline, recursive inlining happens only when -finline-functions (included in -O3) is enabled and --param max-inline-recursive-depth-auto is used. The default value is 450.

    min-inline-recursive-probability
        Recursive inlining is profitable only for function having deep recursion in average and can hurt for function having little recursion depth by increasing the prologue size or complexity of function body to other optimizers.

        When profile feedback is available (see -fprofile-generate) the actual recursion depth can be guessed from probability that function will recurse via given call expression. This parameter limits inlining only to call expression whose probability exceeds given threshold (in percents). The default value is 10.

    inline-call-cost
        Specify cost of call instruction relative to simple arithmetics operations (having cost of 1). Increasing this cost disqualifies inlining of non-leaf functions and at the same time increases size of leaf function that is believed to reduce function size by being inlined. In effect it increases amount of inlining for code having large abstraction penalty (many functions that just pass the arguments to other functions) and decrease inlining for code with low abstraction penalty. The default value is 16.

    max-unrolled-insns
        The maximum number of instructions that a loop should have if that loop is unrolled, and if the loop is unrolled, it determines how many times the loop code is unrolled.

    max-average-unrolled-insns
        The maximum number of instructions biased by probabilities of their execution that a loop should have if that loop is unrolled, and if the loop is unrolled, it determines how many times the loop code is unrolled.

    max-unroll-times
        The maximum number of unrollings of a single loop.

    max-peeled-insns
        The maximum number of instructions that a loop should have if that loop is peeled, and if the loop is peeled, it determines how many times the loop code is peeled.

    max-peel-times
        The maximum number of peelings of a single loop.

    max-completely-peeled-insns
        The maximum number of insns of a completely peeled loop.

    max-completely-peel-times
        The maximum number of iterations of a loop to be suitable for complete peeling.

    max-unswitch-insns
        The maximum number of insns of an unswitched loop.

    max-unswitch-level
        The maximum number of branches unswitched in a single loop.

    lim-expensive
        The minimum cost of an expensive expression in the loop invariant motion.

    iv-consider-all-candidates-bound
        Bound on number of candidates for induction variables below that all candidates are considered for each use in induction variable optimizations. Only the most relevant candidates are considered if there are more candidates, to avoid quadratic time complexity.

    iv-max-considered-uses
        The induction variable optimizations give up on loops that contain more induction variable uses.

    iv-always-prune-cand-set-bound
        If number of candidates in the set is smaller than this value, we always try to remove unnecessary ivs from the set during its optimization when a new iv is added to the set.

    scev-max-expr-size
        Bound on size of expressions used in the scalar evolutions analyzer. Large expressions slow the analyzer.

    vect-max-version-checks
        The maximum number of runtime checks that can be performed when doing loop versioning in the vectorizer. See option ftree-vect-loop-version for more information.

    max-iterations-to-track
        The maximum number of iterations of a loop the brute force algorithm for analysis of # of iterations of the loop tries to evaluate.

    hot-bb-count-fraction
        Select fraction of the maximal count of repetitions of basic block in program given basic block needs to have to be considered hot.

    hot-bb-frequency-fraction
        Select fraction of the maximal frequency of executions of basic block in function given basic block needs to have to be considered hot

    max-predicted-iterations
        The maximum number of loop iterations we predict statically. This is useful in cases where function contain single loop with known bound and other loop with unknown. We predict the known number of iterations correctly, while the unknown number of iterations average to roughly 10. This means that the loop without bounds would appear artificially cold relative to the other one.

    tracer-dynamic-coverage
    tracer-dynamic-coverage-feedback
        This value is used to limit superblock formation once the given percentage of executed instructions is covered. This limits unnecessary code size expansion.

        The tracer-dynamic-coverage-feedback is used only when profile feedback is available. The real profiles (as opposed to statically estimated ones) are much less balanced allowing the threshold to be larger value.

    tracer-max-code-growth
        Stop tail duplication once code growth has reached given percentage. This is rather hokey argument, as most of the duplicates will be eliminated later in cross jumping, so it may be set to much higher values than is the desired code growth.

    tracer-min-branch-ratio
        Stop reverse growth when the reverse probability of best edge is less than this threshold (in percent).

    tracer-min-branch-ratio
    tracer-min-branch-ratio-feedback
        Stop forward growth if the best edge do have probability lower than this threshold.

        Similarly to tracer-dynamic-coverage two values are present, one for compilation for profile feedback and one for compilation without. The value for compilation with profile feedback needs to be more conservative (higher) in order to make tracer effective.

    max-cse-path-length
        Maximum number of basic blocks on path that cse considers. The default is 10.

    max-cse-insns
        The maximum instructions CSE process before flushing. The default is 1000.

    global-var-threshold
        Counts the number of function calls (n) and the number of call-clobbered variables (v). If nxv is larger than this limit, a single artificial variable will be created to represent all the call-clobbered variables at function call sites. This artificial variable will then be made to alias every call-clobbered variable. (done as "int * size_t" on the host machine; beware overflow).

    max-aliased-vops
        Maximum number of virtual operands allowed to represent aliases before triggering the alias grouping heuristic. Alias grouping reduces compile times and memory consumption needed for aliasing at the expense of precision loss in alias information.

    ggc-min-expand
        GCC uses a garbage collector to manage its own memory allocation. This parameter specifies the minimum percentage by which the garbage collector's heap should be allowed to expand between collections. Tuning this may improve compilation speed; it has no effect on code generation.

        The default is 30% + 70% * (RAM/1GB) with an upper bound of 100% when RAM >= 1GB. If "getrlimit" is available, the notion of "RAM" is the smallest of actual RAM and "RLIMIT_DATA" or "RLIMIT_AS". If GCC is not able to calculate RAM on a particular platform, the lower bound of 30% is used. Setting this parameter and ggc-min-heapsize to zero causes a full collection to occur at every opportunity. This is extremely slow, but can be useful for debugging.

    ggc-min-heapsize
        Minimum size of the garbage collector's heap before it begins bothering to collect garbage. The first collection occurs after the heap expands by ggc-min-expand% beyond ggc-min-heapsize. Again, tuning this may improve compilation speed, and has no effect on code generation.

        The default is the smaller of RAM/8, RLIMIT_RSS, or a limit which tries to ensure that RLIMIT_DATA or RLIMIT_AS are not exceeded, but with a lower bound of 4096 (four megabytes) and an upper bound of 131072 (128 megabytes). If GCC is not able to calculate RAM on a particular platform, the lower bound is used. Setting this parameter very large effectively disables garbage collection. Setting this parameter and ggc-min-expand to zero causes a full collection to occur at every opportunity.

    max-reload-search-insns
        The maximum number of instruction reload should look backward for equivalent register. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compile time increase with probably slightly better performance. The default value is 100.

    max-cselib-memory-locations
        The maximum number of memory locations cselib should take into account. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compile time increase with probably slightly better performance. The default value is 500.

    max-flow-memory-locations
        Similar as max-cselib-memory-locations but for dataflow liveness. The default value is 100.

    reorder-blocks-duplicate
    reorder-blocks-duplicate-feedback
        Used by basic block reordering pass to decide whether to use unconditional branch or duplicate the code on its destination. Code is duplicated when its estimated size is smaller than this value multiplied by the estimated size of unconditional jump in the hot spots of the program.

        The reorder-block-duplicate-feedback is used only when profile feedback is available and may be set to higher values than reorder-block-duplicate since information about the hot spots is more accurate.

    max-sched-ready-insns
        The maximum number of instructions ready to be issued the scheduler should consider at any given time during the first scheduling pass. Increasing values mean more thorough searches, making the compilation time increase with probably little benefit. The default value is 100.

    max-sched-region-blocks
        The maximum number of blocks in a region to be considered for interblock scheduling. The default value is 10.

    max-sched-region-insns
        The maximum number of insns in a region to be considered for interblock scheduling. The default value is 100.

    min-spec-prob
        The minimum probability (in percents) of reaching a source block for interblock speculative scheduling. The default value is 40.

    max-sched-extend-regions-iters
        The maximum number of iterations through CFG to extend regions. 0 - disable region extension, N - do at most N iterations. The default value is 0.

    max-sched-insn-conflict-delay
        The maximum conflict delay for an insn to be considered for speculative motion. The default value is 3.

    sched-spec-prob-cutoff
        The minimal probability of speculation success (in percents), so that speculative insn will be scheduled. The default value is 40.

    max-last-value-rtl
        The maximum size measured as number of RTLs that can be recorded in an expression in combiner for a pseudo register as last known value of that register. The default is 10000.

    integer-share-limit
        Small integer constants can use a shared data structure, reducing the compiler's memory usage and increasing its speed. This sets the maximum value of a shared integer constant's. The default value is 256.

    min-virtual-mappings
        Specifies the minimum number of virtual mappings in the incremental SSA updater that should be registered to trigger the virtual mappings heuristic defined by virtual-mappings-ratio. The default value is 100.

    virtual-mappings-ratio
        If the number of virtual mappings is virtual-mappings-ratio bigger than the number of virtual symbols to be updated, then the incremental SSA updater switches to a full update for those symbols. The default ratio is 3.

    ssp-buffer-size
        The minimum size of buffers (i.e. arrays) that will receive stack smashing protection when -fstack-protection is used.

    max-jump-thread-duplication-stmts
        Maximum number of statements allowed in a block that needs to be duplicated when threading jumps.

    max-fields-for-field-sensitive
        Maximum number of fields in a structure we will treat in a field sensitive manner during pointer analysis.

  Options Controlling the Preprocessor
These options control the C preprocessor, which is run on each C source file before actual compilation.

If you use the -E option, nothing is done except preprocessing. Some of these options make sense only together with -E because they cause the preprocessor output to be unsuitable for actual compilation.

-Wp,option
    You can use -Wp,option to bypass the compiler driver and pass option directly through to the preprocessor. If option contains commas, it is split into multiple options at the commas. However, many options are modified, translated or interpreted by the compiler driver before being passed to the preprocessor, and -Wp forcibly bypasses this phase. The preprocessor's direct interface is undocumented and subject to change, so whenever possible you should avoid using -Wp and let the driver handle the options instead.

-Xpreprocessor option
    Pass option as an option to the preprocessor. You can use this to supply system-specific preprocessor options which GCC does not know how to recognize.

    If you want to pass an option that takes an argument, you must use -Xpreprocessor twice, once for the option and once for the argument.

-D name
    Predefine name as a macro, with definition 1.

-D name=definition
    The contents of definition are tokenized and processed as if they appeared during translation phase three in a #define directive. In particular, the definition will be truncated by embedded newline characters.

    If you are invoking the preprocessor from a shell or shell-like program you may need to use the shell's quoting syntax to protect characters such as spaces that have a meaning in the shell syntax.

    If you wish to define a function-like macro on the command line, write its argument list with surrounding parentheses before the equals sign (if any). Parentheses are meaningful to most shells, so you will need to quote the option. With sh and csh, -D'name(args...)=definition' works.

    -D and -U options are processed in the order they are given on the command line. All -imacros file and -include file options are processed after all -D and -U options.

-U name
    Cancel any previous definition of name, either built in or provided with a -D option.

-undef
    Do not predefine any system-specific or GCC-specific macros. The standard predefined macros remain defined.

-I dir
    Add the directory dir to the list of directories to be searched for header files. Directories named by -I are searched before the standard system include directories. If the directory dir is a standard system include directory, the option is ignored to ensure that the default search order for system directories and the special treatment of system headers are not defeated .

-o file
    Write output to file. This is the same as specifying file as the second non-option argument to cpp. gcc has a different interpretation of a second non-option argument, so you must use -o to specify the output file.

-Wall
    Turns on all optional warnings which are desirable for normal code. At present this is -Wcomment, -Wtrigraphs, -Wmultichar and a warning about integer promotion causing a change of sign in "#if" expressions. Note that many of the preprocessor's warnings are on by default and have no options to control them.

-Wcomment
-Wcomments
    Warn whenever a comment-start sequence /* appears in a /* comment, or whenever a backslash-newline appears in a // comment. (Both forms have the same effect.)

-Wtrigraphs
    Most trigraphs in comments cannot affect the meaning of the program. However, a trigraph that would form an escaped newline (??/ at the end of a line) can, by changing where the comment begins or ends. Therefore, only trigraphs that would form escaped newlines produce warnings inside a comment.

    This option is implied by -Wall. If -Wall is not given, this option is still enabled unless trigraphs are enabled. To get trigraph conversion without warnings, but get the other -Wall warnings, use -trigraphs -Wall -Wno-trigraphs.

-Wtraditional
    Warn about certain constructs that behave differently in traditional and ISO C. Also warn about ISO C constructs that have no traditional C equivalent, and problematic constructs which should be avoided.

-Wimport
    Warn the first time #import is used.

-Wundef
    Warn whenever an identifier which is not a macro is encountered in an #if directive, outside of defined. Such identifiers are replaced with zero.

-Wunused-macros
    Warn about macros defined in the main file that are unused. A macro is used if it is expanded or tested for existence at least once. The preprocessor will also warn if the macro has not been used at the time it is redefined or undefined.

    Built-in macros, macros defined on the command line, and macros defined in include files are not warned about.

    Note: If a macro is actually used, but only used in skipped conditional blocks, then CPP will report it as unused. To avoid the warning in such a case, you might improve the scope of the macro's definition by, for example, moving it into the first skipped block. Alternatively, you could provide a dummy use with something like:

            #if defined the_macro_causing_the_warning
            #endif

-Wendif-labels
    Warn whenever an #else or an #endif are followed by text. This usually happens in code of the form

            #if FOO
            ...
            #else FOO
            ...
            #endif FOO

    The second and third "FOO" should be in comments, but often are not in older programs. This warning is on by default.

-Werror
    Make all warnings into hard errors. Source code which triggers warnings will be rejected.

-Wsystem-headers
    Issue warnings for code in system headers. These are normally unhelpful in finding bugs in your own code, therefore suppressed. If you are responsible for the system library, you may want to see them.

-w  Suppress all warnings, including those which GNU CPP issues by default.

-pedantic
    Issue all the mandatory diagnostics listed in the C standard. Some of them are left out by default, since they trigger frequently on harmless code.

-pedantic-errors
    Issue all the mandatory diagnostics, and make all mandatory diagnostics into errors. This includes mandatory diagnostics that GCC issues without -pedantic but treats as warnings.

-M  Instead of outputting the result of preprocessing, output a rule suitable for make describing the dependencies of the main source file. The preprocessor outputs one make rule containing the object file name for that source file, a colon, and the names of all the included files, including those coming from -include or -imacros command line options.

    Unless specified explicitly (with -MT or -MQ), the object file name consists of the basename of the source file with any suffix replaced with object file suffix. If there are many included files then the rule is split into several lines using \-newline. The rule has no commands.

    This option does not suppress the preprocessor's debug output, such as -dM. To avoid mixing such debug output with the dependency rules you should explicitly specify the dependency output file with -MF, or use an environment variable like DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT. Debug output will still be sent to the regular output stream as normal.

    Passing -M to the driver implies -E, and suppresses warnings with an implicit -w.

-MM Like -M but do not mention header files that are found in system header directories, nor header files that are included, directly or indirectly, from such a header.

    This implies that the choice of angle brackets or double quotes in an #include directive does not in itself determine whether that header will appear in -MM dependency output. This is a slight change in semantics from GCC versions 3.0 and earlier.

-MF file
    When used with -M or -MM, specifies a file to write the dependencies to. If no -MF switch is given the preprocessor sends the rules to the same place it would have sent preprocessed output.

    When used with the driver options -MD or -MMD, -MF overrides the default dependency output file.

-dependency-file
    Like -MF. (APPLE ONLY)

-MG In conjunction with an option such as -M requesting dependency generation, -MG assumes missing header files are generated files and adds them to the dependency list without raising an error. The dependency filename is taken directly from the "#include" directive without prepending any path. -MG also suppresses preprocessed output, as a missing header file renders this useless.

    This feature is used in automatic updating of makefiles.

-MP This option instructs CPP to add a phony target for each dependency other than the main file, causing each to depend on nothing. These dummy rules work around errors make gives if you remove header files without updating the Makefile to match.

    This is typical output:

            test.o: test.c test.h

            test.h:

-MT target
    Change the target of the rule emitted by dependency generation. By default CPP takes the name of the main input file, including any path, deletes any file suffix such as .c, and appends the platform's usual object suffix. The result is the target.

    An -MT option will set the target to be exactly the string you specify. If you want multiple targets, you can specify them as a single argument to -MT, or use multiple -MT options.

    For example, -MT '$(objpfx)foo.o' might give

            $(objpfx)foo.o: foo.c

-MQ target
    Same as -MT, but it quotes any characters which are special to Make. -MQ '$(objpfx)foo.o' gives

            $$(objpfx)foo.o: foo.c

    The default target is automatically quoted, as if it were given with -MQ.

-MD -MD is equivalent to -M -MF file, except that -E is not implied. The driver determines file based on whether an -o option is given. If it is, the driver uses its argument but with a suffix of .d, otherwise it take the basename of the input file and applies a .d suffix.

    If -MD is used in conjunction with -E, any -o switch is understood to specify the dependency output file, but if used without -E, each -o is understood to specify a target object file.

    Since -E is not implied, -MD can be used to generate a dependency output file as a side-effect of the compilation process.

-MMD
    Like -MD except mention only user header files, not system header files.

-fpch-deps
    When using precompiled headers, this flag will cause the dependency-output flags to also list the files from the precompiled header's dependencies. If not specified only the precompiled header would be listed and not the files that were used to create it because those files are not consulted when a precompiled header is used.

-fpch-preprocess
    This option allows use of a precompiled header together with -E. It inserts a special "#pragma", "#pragma GCC pch_preprocess "<filename>"" in the output to mark the place where the precompiled header was found, and its filename. When -fpreprocessed is in use, GCC recognizes this "#pragma" and loads the PCH.

    This option is off by default, because the resulting preprocessed output is only really suitable as input to GCC. It is switched on by -save-temps.

    You should not write this "#pragma" in your own code, but it is safe to edit the filename if the PCH file is available in a different location. The filename may be absolute or it may be relative to GCC's current directory.

-x c
-x c++
-x objective-c
-x objective-c++
-x assembler-with-cpp
    Specify the source language: C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, or assembly. This has nothing to do with standards conformance or extensions; it merely selects which base syntax to expect. If you give none of these options, cpp will deduce the language from the extension of the source file: .c, .cc, .m, .mm, or .S. Some other common extensions for C++ and assembly are also recognized. If cpp does not recognize the extension, it will treat the file as C; this is the most generic mode.

    Note: Previous versions of cpp accepted a -lang option which selected both the language and the standards conformance level. This option has been removed, because it conflicts with the -l option.

-std=standard
-ansi
    Specify the standard to which the code should conform. Currently CPP knows about C and C++ standards; others may be added in the future.

    standard may be one of:

    "iso9899:1990"
    "c89"
        The ISO C standard from 1990. c89 is the customary shorthand for this version of the standard.

        The -ansi option is equivalent to -std=c89.

    "iso9899:199409"
        The 1990 C standard, as amended in 1994.

    "iso9899:1999"
    "c99"
    "iso9899:199x"
    "c9x"
        The revised ISO C standard, published in December 1999. Before publication, this was known as C9X.

    "gnu89"
        The 1990 C standard plus GNU extensions. This is the default.

    "gnu99"
    "gnu9x"
        The 1999 C standard plus GNU extensions.

    "c++98"
        The 1998 ISO C++ standard plus amendments.

    "gnu++98"
        The same as -std=c++98 plus GNU extensions. This is the default for C++ code.

-I- Split the include path. Any directories specified with -I options before -I- are searched only for headers requested with "#include "file""; they are not searched for "#include <file>". If additional directories are specified with -I options after the -I-, those directories are searched for all #include directives.

    In addition, -I- inhibits the use of the directory of the current file directory as the first search directory for "#include "file"". This option has been deprecated.

-nostdinc
    Do not search the standard system directories for header files. Only the directories you have specified with -I options (and the directory of the current file, if appropriate) are searched.

-nostdinc++
    Do not search for header files in the C++-specific standard directories, but do still search the other standard directories. (This option is used when building the C++ library.)

-include file
    Process file as if "#include "file"" appeared as the first line of the primary source file. However, the first directory searched for file is the preprocessor's working directory instead of the directory containing the main source file. If not found there, it is searched for in the remainder of the "#include "..."" search chain as normal.

    If multiple -include options are given, the files are included in the order they appear on the command line.

-imacros file
    Exactly like -include, except that any output produced by scanning file is thrown away. Macros it defines remain defined. This allows you to acquire all the macros from a header without also processing its declarations.

    All files specified by -imacros are processed before all files specified by -include.

-idirafter dir
    Search dir for header files, but do it after all directories specified with -I and the standard system directories have been exhausted. dir is treated as a system include directory.

-iprefix prefix
    Specify prefix as the prefix for subsequent -iwithprefix options. If the prefix represents a directory, you should include the final /.

-iwithprefix dir
-iwithprefixbefore dir
    Append dir to the prefix specified previously with -iprefix, and add the resulting directory to the include search path. -iwithprefixbefore puts it in the same place -I would; -iwithprefix puts it where -idirafter would.

-isysroot dir
    This option is like the --sysroot option, but applies only to header files, except for Apple's version of GCC, where it applies to both header files and libraries and effectively replaces the --sysroot option. See the --sysroot option for more information.

-imultilib dir
    Use dir as a subdirectory of the directory containing target-specific C++ headers.

-isystem dir
    Search dir for header files, after all directories specified by -I but before the standard system directories. Mark it as a system directory, so that it gets the same special treatment as is applied to the standard system directories.

-iquote dir
    Search dir only for header files requested with "#include "file""; they are not searched for "#include <file>", before all directories specified by -I and before the standard system directories.

-fdollars-in-identifiers
    Accept $ in identifiers.

-fextended-identifiers
    Accept universal character names in identifiers. This option is experimental; in a future version of GCC, it will be enabled by default for C99 and C++.

-fpreprocessed
    Indicate to the preprocessor that the input file has already been preprocessed. This suppresses things like macro expansion, trigraph conversion, escaped newline splicing, and processing of most directives. The preprocessor still recognizes and removes comments, so that you can pass a file preprocessed with -C to the compiler without problems. In this mode the integrated preprocessor is little more than a tokenizer for the front ends.

    -fpreprocessed is implicit if the input file has one of the extensions .i, .ii or .mi. These are the extensions that GCC uses for preprocessed files created by -save-temps.

-ftabstop=width
    Set the distance between tab stops. This helps the preprocessor report correct column numbers in warnings or errors, even if tabs appear on the line. If the value is less than 1 or greater than 100, the option is ignored. The default is 8.

-fexec-charset=charset
    Set the execution character set, used for string and character constants. The default is UTF-8. charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine.

-fwide-exec-charset=charset
    Set the wide execution character set, used for wide string and character constants. The default is UTF-32 or UTF-16, whichever corresponds to the width of "wchar_t". As with -fexec-charset, charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine; however, you will have problems with encodings that do not fit exactly in "wchar_t".

-finput-charset=charset
    Set the input character set, used for translation from the character set of the input file to the source character set used by GCC. If the locale does not specify, or GCC cannot get this information from the locale, the default is UTF-8. This can be overridden by either the locale or this command line option. Currently the command line option takes precedence if there's a conflict. charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine.

-fworking-directory
    Enable generation of linemarkers in the preprocessor output that will let the compiler know the current working directory at the time of preprocessing. When this option is enabled, the preprocessor will emit, after the initial linemarker, a second linemarker with the current working directory followed by two slashes. GCC will use this directory, when it's present in the preprocessed input, as the directory emitted as the current working directory in some debugging information formats. This option is implicitly enabled if debugging information is enabled, but this can be inhibited with the negated form -fno-working-directory. If the -P flag is present in the command line, this option has no effect, since no "#line" directives are emitted whatsoever.

-fno-show-column
    Do not print column numbers in diagnostics. This may be necessary if diagnostics are being scanned by a program that does not understand the column numbers, such as dejagnu.

-A predicate=answer
    Make an assertion with the predicate predicate and answer answer. This form is preferred to the older form -A predicate(answer), which is still supported, because it does not use shell special characters.

-A -predicate=answer
    Cancel an assertion with the predicate predicate and answer answer.

-dCHARS
    CHARS is a sequence of one or more of the following characters, and must not be preceded by a space. Other characters are interpreted by the compiler proper, or reserved for future versions of GCC, and so are silently ignored. If you specify characters whose behavior conflicts, the result is undefined.

    M   Instead of the normal output, generate a list of #define directives for all the macros defined during the execution of the preprocessor, including predefined macros. This gives you a way of finding out what is predefined in your version of the preprocessor. Assuming you have no file foo.h, the command

                touch foo.h; cpp -dM foo.h

        will show all the predefined macros.

        If you use -dM without the -E option, -dM is interpreted as a synonym for -fdump-rtl-mach.

    D   Like M except in two respects: it does not include the predefined macros, and it outputs both the #define directives and the result of preprocessing. Both kinds of output go to the standard output file.

    N   Like D, but emit only the macro names, not their expansions.

    I   Output #include directives in addition to the result of preprocessing.

-P  Inhibit generation of linemarkers in the output from the preprocessor. This might be useful when running the preprocessor on something that is not C code, and will be sent to a program which might be confused by the linemarkers.

-C  Do not discard comments. All comments are passed through to the output file, except for comments in processed directives, which are deleted along with the directive.

    You should be prepared for side effects when using -C; it causes the preprocessor to treat comments as tokens in their own right. For example, comments appearing at the start of what would be a directive line have the effect of turning that line into an ordinary source line, since the first token on the line is no longer a #.

-CC Do not discard comments, including during macro expansion. This is like -C, except that comments contained within macros are also passed through to the output file where the macro is expanded.

    In addition to the side-effects of the -C option, the -CC option causes all C++-style comments inside a macro to be converted to C-style comments. This is to prevent later use of that macro from inadvertently commenting out the remainder of the source line.

    The -CC option is generally used to support lint comments.

-traditional-cpp
    Try to imitate the behavior of old-fashioned C preprocessors, as opposed to ISO C preprocessors.

-trigraphs
    Process trigraph sequences. These are three-character sequences, all starting with ??, that are defined by ISO C to stand for single characters. For example, ??/ stands for \, so '??/n' is a character constant for a newline. By default, GCC ignores trigraphs, but in standard-conforming modes it converts them. See the -std and -ansi options.

    The nine trigraphs and their replacements are

            Trigraph:       ??(  ??)  ??<  ??>  ??=  ??/  ??'  ??!  ??-
            Replacement:      [    ]    {    }    #    \    ^    |    ~

-remap
    Enable special code to work around file systems which only permit very short file names, such as MS-DOS.

--help
--target-help
    Print text describing all the command line options instead of preprocessing anything.

-v  Verbose mode. Print out GNU CPP's version number at the beginning of execution, and report the final form of the include path.

-H  Print the name of each header file used, in addition to other normal activities. Each name is indented to show how deep in the #include stack it is. Precompiled header files are also printed, even if they are found to be invalid; an invalid precompiled header file is printed with ...x and a valid one with ...! .

-version
--version
    Print out GNU CPP's version number. With one dash, proceed to preprocess as normal. With two dashes, exit immediately.

  Passing Options to the Assembler
You can pass options to the assembler.

-Wa,option
    Pass option as an option to the assembler. If option contains commas, it is split into multiple options at the commas.

-Xassembler option
    Pass option as an option to the assembler. You can use this to supply system-specific assembler options which GCC does not know how to recognize.

    If you want to pass an option that takes an argument, you must use -Xassembler twice, once for the option and once for the argument.

  Options for Linking
These options come into play when the compiler links object files into an executable output file. They are meaningless if the compiler is not doing a link step.

In addition to the options listed below, Apple's GCC also accepts and passes nearly all of the options defined by the linker ld and by the library tool libtool. Common options include -framework, -dynamic, -bundle, -flat_namespace, and so forth. See the ld and libtool man pages for further details.

object-file-name
    A file name that does not end in a special recognized suffix is considered to name an object file or library. (Object files are distinguished from libraries by the linker according to the file contents.) If linking is done, these object files are used as input to the linker.

-c
-S
-E  If any of these options is used, then the linker is not run, and object file names should not be used as arguments.

-llibrary
-l library
    Search the library named library when linking. (The second alternative with the library as a separate argument is only for POSIX compliance and is not recommended.)

    It makes a difference where in the command you write this option; the linker searches and processes libraries and object files in the order they are specified. Thus, foo.o -lz bar.o searches library z after file foo.o but before bar.o. If bar.o refers to functions in z, those functions may not be loaded.

    The linker searches a standard list of directories for the library, which is actually a file named liblibrary.a. The linker then uses this file as if it had been specified precisely by name.

    The directories searched include several standard system directories plus any that you specify with -L.

    Normally the files found this way are library files---archive files whose members are object files. The linker handles an archive file by scanning through it for members which define symbols that have so far been referenced but not defined. But if the file that is found is an ordinary object file, it is linked in the usual fashion. The only difference between using an -l option and specifying a file name is that -l surrounds library with lib and .a and searches several directories.

-lobjc
    You need this special case of the -l option in order to link an Objective-C or Objective-C++ program.

-nostartfiles
    Do not use the standard system startup files when linking. The standard system libraries are used normally, unless -nostdlib or -nodefaultlibs is used.

-nodefaultlibs
    Do not use the standard system libraries when linking. Only the libraries you specify will be passed to the linker. The standard startup files are used normally, unless -nostartfiles is used. The compiler may generate calls to "memcmp", "memset", "memcpy" and "memmove". These entries are usually resolved by entries in libc. These entry points should be supplied through some other mechanism when this option is specified.

-nostdlib
    Do not use the standard system startup files or libraries when linking. No startup files and only the libraries you specify will be passed to the linker. The compiler may generate calls to "memcmp", "memset", "memcpy" and "memmove". These entries are usually resolved by entries in libc. These entry points should be supplied through some other mechanism when this option is specified.

    One of the standard libraries bypassed by -nostdlib and -nodefaultlibs is libgcc.a, a library of internal subroutines that GCC uses to overcome shortcomings of particular machines, or special needs for some languages.

    In most cases, you need libgcc.a even when you want to avoid other standard libraries. In other words, when you specify -nostdlib or -nodefaultlibs you should usually specify -lgcc as well. This ensures that you have no unresolved references to internal GCC library subroutines. (For example, __main, used to ensure C++ constructors will be called.)

-pie
    Produce a position independent executable on targets which support it. For predictable results, you must also specify the same set of options that were used to generate code (-fpie, -fPIE, or model suboptions) when you specify this option.

-rdynamic
    Pass the flag -export-dynamic to the ELF linker, on targets that support it. This instructs the linker to add all symbols, not only used ones, to the dynamic symbol table. This option is needed for some uses of "dlopen" or to allow obtaining backtraces from within a program.

-s  Remove all symbol table and relocation information from the executable.

-static
    On systems that support dynamic linking, this prevents linking with the shared libraries. On other systems, this option has no effect.

    This option will not work on Mac OS X unless all libraries (including libgcc.a) have also been compiled with -static. Since neither a static version of libSystem.dylib nor crt0.o are provided, this option is not useful to most people.

-shared
    Produce a shared object which can then be linked with other objects to form an executable. Not all systems support this option. For predictable results, you must also specify the same set of options that were used to generate code (-fpic, -fPIC, or model suboptions) when you specify this option.[1]

    This option is not supported on Mac OS X.

-shared-libgcc
-static-libgcc
    On systems that provide libgcc as a shared library, these options force the use of either the shared or static version respectively. If no shared version of libgcc was built when the compiler was configured, these options have no effect.

    There are several situations in which an application should use the shared libgcc instead of the static version. The most common of these is when the application wishes to throw and catch exceptions across different shared libraries. In that case, each of the libraries as well as the application itself should use the shared libgcc.

    Therefore, the G++ and GCJ drivers automatically add -shared-libgcc whenever you build a shared library or a main executable, because C++ and Java programs typically use exceptions, so this is the right thing to do.

    If, instead, you use the GCC driver to create shared libraries, you may find that they will not always be linked with the shared libgcc. If GCC finds, at its configuration time, that you have a non-GNU linker or a GNU linker that does not support option --eh-frame-hdr, it will link the shared version of libgcc into shared libraries by default. Otherwise, it will take advantage of the linker and optimize away the linking with the shared version of libgcc, linking with the static version of libgcc by default. This allows exceptions to propagate through such shared libraries, without incurring relocation costs at library load time.

    However, if a library or main executable is supposed to throw or catch exceptions, you must link it using the G++ or GCJ driver, as appropriate for the languages used in the program, or using the option -shared-libgcc, such that it is linked with the shared libgcc.

-symbolic
    Bind references to global symbols when building a shared object. Warn about any unresolved references (unless overridden by the link editor option -Xlinker -z -Xlinker defs). Only a few systems support this option.

-Xlinker option
    Pass option as an option to the linker. You can use this to supply system-specific linker options which GCC does not know how to recognize.

    If you want to pass an option that takes an argument, you must use -Xlinker twice, once for the option and once for the argument. For example, to pass -assert definitions, you must write -Xlinker -assert -Xlinker definitions. It does not work to write -Xlinker "-assert definitions", because this passes the entire string as a single argument, which is not what the linker expects.

-Wl,option
    Pass option as an option to the linker. If option contains commas, it is split into multiple options at the commas.

-u symbol
    Pretend the symbol symbol is undefined, to force linking of library modules to define it. You can use -u multiple times with different symbols to force loading of additional library modules.

  Options for Directory Search
These options specify directories to search for header files, for libraries and for parts of the compiler:

-Idir
    Add the directory dir to the head of the list of directories to be searched for header files. This can be used to override a system header file, substituting your own version, since these directories are searched before the system header file directories. However, you should not use this option to add directories that contain vendor-supplied system header files (use -isystem for that). If you use more than one -I option, the directories are scanned in left-to-right order; the standard system directories come after.

    If a standard system include directory, or a directory specified with -isystem, is also specified with -I, the -I option will be ignored. The directory will still be searched but as a system directory at its normal position in the system include chain. This is to ensure that GCC's procedure to fix buggy system headers and the ordering for the include_next directive are not inadvertently changed. If you really need to change the search order for system directories, use the -nostdinc and/or -isystem options.

    The option -iwithsysroot (APPLE ONLY), if specified with an absolute path, will prepend the system root directory (if applicable) to the path and add it to the beginning of the system search paths. If specified with a relative path, -iwithsysroot will behave identically to -isystem.

-iquotedir
    Add the directory dir to the head of the list of directories to be searched for header files only for the case of #include "file"; they are not searched for #include <file>, otherwise just like -I.

-Ldir
    Add directory dir to the list of directories to be searched for -l.

-Bprefix
    This option specifies where to find the executables, libraries, include files, and data files of the compiler itself.

    The compiler driver program runs one or more of the subprograms cpp, cc1, as and ld. It tries prefix as a prefix for each program it tries to run, both with and without machine/version/.

    For each subprogram to be run, the compiler driver first tries the -B prefix, if any. If that name is not found, or if -B was not specified, the driver tries two standard prefixes, which are /usr/lib/gcc/ and /usr/local/lib/gcc/. If neither of those results in a file name that is found, the unmodified program name is searched for using the directories specified in your PATH environment variable.

    The compiler will check to see if the path provided by the -B refers to a directory, and if necessary it will add a directory separator character at the end of the path.

    -B prefixes that effectively specify directory names also apply to libraries in the linker, because the compiler translates these options into -L options for the linker. They also apply to includes files in the preprocessor, because the compiler translates these options into -isystem options for the preprocessor. In this case, the compiler appends include to the prefix.

    The run-time support file libgcc.a can also be searched for using the -B prefix, if needed. If it is not found there, the two standard prefixes above are tried, and that is all. The file is left out of the link if it is not found by those means.

    Another way to specify a prefix much like the -B prefix is to use the environment variable GCC_EXEC_PREFIX.

    As a special kludge, if the path provided by -B is [dir/]stageN/, where N is a number in the range 0 to 9, then it will be replaced by [dir/]include. This is to help with boot-strapping the compiler.

-specs=file
    Process file after the compiler reads in the standard specs file, in order to override the defaults that the gcc driver program uses when determining what switches to pass to cc1, cc1plus, as, ld, etc. More than one -specs=file can be specified on the command line, and they are processed in order, from left to right.

--sysroot=dir
    Use dir as the logical root directory for headers and libraries. For example, if the compiler would normally search for headers in /usr/include and libraries in /usr/lib, it will instead search dir/usr/include and dir/usr/lib.

    With Apple's version of GCC, this option is effectively replaced by -isysroot, which you should use instead of --sysroot. For other (non-Apple) versions of GCC, if you use both this option and the -isysroot option, then the --sysroot option will apply to libraries, but the -isysroot option will apply to header files.

    The GNU linker (beginning with version 2.16) has the necessary support for this option. If your linker does not support this option, the header file aspect of --sysroot will still work, but the library aspect will not.

-I- This option has been deprecated. Please use -iquote instead for -I directories before the -I- and remove the -I-. Any directories you specify with -I options before the -I- option are searched only for the case of #include "file"; they are not searched for #include <file>.

    If additional directories are specified with -I options after the -I-, these directories are searched for all #include directives. (Ordinarily all -I directories are used this way.)

    In addition, the -I- option inhibits the use of the current directory (where the current input file came from) as the first search directory for #include "file". There is no way to override this effect of -I-. With -I. you can specify searching the directory which was current when the compiler was invoked. That is not exactly the same as what the preprocessor does by default, but it is often satisfactory.

    -I- does not inhibit the use of the standard system directories for header files. Thus, -I- and -nostdinc are independent.

  Specifying Target Machine and Compiler Version
The usual way to run GCC is to run the executable called gcc, or <machine>-gcc when cross-compiling, or <machine>-gcc-<version> to run a version other than the one that was installed last. Sometimes this is inconvenient, so GCC provides options that will switch to another cross-compiler or version.

-b machine
    The argument machine specifies the target machine for compilation.

    The value to use for machine is the same as was specified as the machine type when configuring GCC as a cross-compiler. For example, if a cross-compiler was configured with configure arm-elf, meaning to compile for an arm processor with elf binaries, then you would specify -b arm-elf to run that cross compiler. Because there are other options beginning with -b, the configuration must contain a hyphen.

-V version
    The argument version specifies which version of GCC to run. This is useful when multiple versions are installed. For example, version might be 4.0, meaning to run GCC version 4.0.

The -V and -b options work by running the <machine>-gcc-<version> executable, so there's no real reason to use them if you can just run that directly.

  Hardware Models and Configurations
Earlier we discussed the standard option -b which chooses among different installed compilers for completely different target machines, such as VAX vs. 68000 vs. 80386.

In addition, each of these target machine types can have its own special options, starting with -m, to choose among various hardware models or configurations---for example, 68010 vs 68020, floating coprocessor or none. A single installed version of the compiler can compile for any model or configuration, according to the options specified.

Some configurations of the compiler also support additional special options, usually for compatibility with other compilers on the same platform.

ARM Options

These -m options are defined for Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) architectures:

-mabi=name
    Generate code for the specified ABI. Permissible values are: apcs-gnu, atpcs, aapcs, aapcs-linux and iwmmxt.

-mapcs-frame
    Generate a stack frame that is compliant with the ARM Procedure Call Standard for all functions, even if this is not strictly necessary for correct execution of the code. Specifying -fomit-frame-pointer with this option will cause the stack frames not to be generated for leaf functions. The default is -mno-apcs-frame.

-mapcs
    This is a synonym for -mapcs-frame.

-mapcs-stack-check
    Generate code to check the amount of stack space available upon entry to every function (that actually uses some stack space). If there is insufficient space available then either the function __rt_stkovf_split_small or __rt_stkovf_split_big will be called, depending upon the amount of stack space required. The run time system is required to provide these functions. The default is -mno-apcs-stack-check, since this produces smaller code.

-mapcs-float
    Pass floating point arguments using the float point registers. This is one of the variants of the APCS. This option is recommended if the target hardware has a floating point unit or if a lot of floating point arithmetic is going to be performed by the code. The default is -mno-apcs-float, since integer only code is slightly increased in size if -mapcs-float is used.

-mapcs-reentrant
    Generate reentrant, position independent code. The default is -mno-apcs-reentrant.

-mthumb-interwork
    Generate code which supports calling between the ARM and Thumb instruction sets. Without this option the two instruction sets cannot be reliably used inside one program. The default is -mno-thumb-interwork, since slightly larger code is generated when -mthumb-interwork is specified.

-mno-sched-prolog
    Prevent the reordering of instructions in the function prolog, or the merging of those instruction with the instructions in the function's body. This means that all functions will start with a recognizable set of instructions (or in fact one of a choice from a small set of different function prologues), and this information can be used to locate the start if functions inside an executable piece of code. The default is -msched-prolog.

-mhard-float
    Generate output containing floating point instructions. This is the default.

-msoft-float
    Generate output containing library calls for floating point. Warning: the requisite libraries are not available for all ARM targets. Normally the facilities of the machine's usual C compiler are used, but this cannot be done directly in cross-compilation. You must make your own arrangements to provide suitable library functions for cross-compilation.

    -msoft-float changes the calling convention in the output file; therefore, it is only useful if you compile all of a program with this option. In particular, you need to compile libgcc.a, the library that comes with GCC, with -msoft-float in order for this to work.

-mfloat-abi=name
    Specifies which ABI to use for floating point values. Permissible values are: soft, softfp and hard.

    soft and hard are equivalent to -msoft-float and -mhard-float respectively. softfp allows the generation of floating point instructions, but still uses the soft-float calling conventions.

-mlittle-endian
    Generate code for a processor running in little-endian mode. This is the default for all standard configurations.

-mbig-endian
    Generate code for a processor running in big-endian mode; the default is to compile code for a little-endian processor.

-mwords-little-endian
    This option only applies when generating code for big-endian processors. Generate code for a little-endian word order but a big-endian byte order. That is, a byte order of the form 32107654. Note: this option should only be used if you require compatibility with code for big-endian ARM processors generated by versions of the compiler prior to 2.8.

-mcpu=name
    This specifies the name of the target ARM processor. GCC uses this name to determine what kind of instructions it can emit when generating assembly code. Permissible names are: arm2, arm250, arm3, arm6, arm60, arm600, arm610, arm620, arm7, arm7m, arm7d, arm7dm, arm7di, arm7dmi, arm70, arm700, arm700i, arm710, arm710c, arm7100, arm7500, arm7500fe, arm7tdmi, arm7tdmi-s, arm8, strongarm, strongarm110, strongarm1100, arm8, arm810, arm9, arm9e, arm920, arm920t, arm922t, arm946e-s, arm966e-s, arm968e-s, arm926ej-s, arm940t, arm9tdmi, arm10tdmi, arm1020t, arm1026ej-s, arm10e, arm1020e, arm1022e, arm1136j-s, arm1136jf-s, mpcore, mpcorenovfp, arm1176jz-s, arm1176jzf-s, xscale, iwmmxt, ep9312.

-mtune=name
    This option is very similar to the -mcpu= option, except that instead of specifying the actual target processor type, and hence restricting which instructions can be used, it specifies that GCC should tune the performance of the code as if the target were of the type specified in this option, but still choosing the instructions that it will generate based on the cpu specified by a -mcpu= option. For some ARM implementations better performance can be obtained by using this option.

-march=name
    This specifies the name of the target ARM architecture. GCC uses this name to determine what kind of instructions it can emit when generating assembly code. This option can be used in conjunction with or instead of the -mcpu= option. Permissible names are: armv2, armv2a, armv3, armv3m, armv4, armv4t, armv5, armv5t, armv5te, armv6, armv6j, iwmmxt, ep9312.

-mfpu=name
-mfpe=number
-mfp=number
    This specifies what floating point hardware (or hardware emulation) is available on the target. Permissible names are: fpa, fpe2, fpe3, maverick, vfp. -mfp and -mfpe are synonyms for -mfpu=fpenumber, for compatibility with older versions of GCC.

    If -msoft-float is specified this specifies the format of floating point values.

-mstructure-size-boundary=n
    The size of all structures and unions will be rounded up to a multiple of the number of bits set by this option. Permissible values are 8, 32 and 64. The default value varies for different toolchains. For the COFF targeted toolchain the default value is 8. A value of 64 is only allowed if the underlying ABI supports it.

    Specifying the larger number can produce faster, more efficient code, but can also increase the size of the program. Different values are potentially incompatible. Code compiled with one value cannot necessarily expect to work with code or libraries compiled with another value, if they exchange information using structures or unions.

-mabort-on-noreturn
    Generate a call to the function "abort" at the end of a "noreturn" function. It will be executed if the function tries to return.

-mlong-calls
-mno-long-calls
    Tells the compiler to perform function calls by first loading the address of the function into a register and then performing a subroutine call on this register. This switch is needed if the target function will lie outside of the 64 megabyte addressing range of the offset based version of subroutine call instruction.

    Even if this switch is enabled, not all function calls will be turned into long calls. The heuristic is that static functions, functions which have the short-call attribute, functions that are inside the scope of a #pragma no_long_calls directive and functions whose definitions have already been compiled within the current compilation unit, will not be turned into long calls. The exception to this rule is that weak function definitions, functions with the long-call attribute or the section attribute, and functions that are within the scope of a #pragma long_calls directive, will always be turned into long calls.

    This feature is not enabled by default. Specifying -mno-long-calls will restore the default behavior, as will placing the function calls within the scope of a #pragma long_calls_off directive. Note these switches have no effect on how the compiler generates code to handle function calls via function pointers.

-mnop-fun-dllimport
    Disable support for the "dllimport" attribute.

-msingle-pic-base
    Treat the register used for PIC addressing as read-only, rather than loading it in the prologue for each function. The run-time system is responsible for initializing this register with an appropriate value before execution begins.

-mpic-register=reg
    Specify the register to be used for PIC addressing. The default is R10 unless stack-checking is enabled, when R9 is used.

-mcirrus-fix-invalid-insns
    Insert NOPs into the instruction stream to in order to work around problems with invalid Maverick instruction combinations. This option is only valid if the -mcpu=ep9312 option has been used to enable generation of instructions for the Cirrus Maverick floating point co-processor. This option is not enabled by default, since the problem is only present in older Maverick implementations. The default can be re-enabled by use of the -mno-cirrus-fix-invalid-insns switch.

-mpoke-function-name
    Write the name of each function into the text section, directly preceding the function prologue. The generated code is similar to this:

                 t0
                     .ascii "arm_poke_function_name", 0
                     .align
                 t1
                     .word 0xff000000 + (t1 - t0)
                 arm_poke_function_name
                     mov     ip, sp
                     stmfd   sp!, {fp, ip, lr, pc}
                     sub     fp, ip, #4

    When performing a stack backtrace, code can inspect the value of "pc" stored at "fp + 0". If the trace function then looks at location "pc - 12" and the top 8 bits are set, then we know that there is a function name embedded immediately preceding this location and has length "((pc[-3]) & 0xff000000)".

-mthumb
    Generate code for the 16-bit Thumb instruction set. For ARMv7, the default is to use the THUMB2 instruction set. For all other architectures, the default is to use the 32-bit ARM instruction set. The ARM instruction set may be explicitly selected via -mno-thumb or -marm.

-mtpcs-frame
    Generate a stack frame that is compliant with the Thumb Procedure Call Standard for all non-leaf functions. (A leaf function is one that does not call any other functions.) The default is -mno-tpcs-frame.

-mtpcs-leaf-frame
    Generate a stack frame that is compliant with the Thumb Procedure Call Standard for all leaf functions. (A leaf function is one that does not call any other functions.) The default is -mno-apcs-leaf-frame.

-mcallee-super-interworking
    Gives all externally visible functions in the file being compiled an ARM instruction set header which switches to Thumb mode before executing the rest of the function. This allows these functions to be called from non-interworking code.

-mcaller-super-interworking
    Allows calls via function pointers (including virtual functions) to execute correctly regardless of whether the target code has been compiled for interworking or not. There is a small overhead in the cost of executing a function pointer if this option is enabled.

-mtp=name
    Specify the access model for the thread local storage pointer. The valid models are soft, which generates calls to "__aeabi_read_tp", cp15, which fetches the thread pointer from "cp15" directly (supported in the arm6k architecture), and auto, which uses the best available method for the selected processor. The default setting is auto.

-mms-bitfields
    Set the default structure layout to be compatible with the Microsoft compiler standard. This is equivalent to adding an "ms_struct" attribute to each structure and union tag definition. The default is mno-ms-bitfields.

Darwin Options

These options are defined for all architectures running the Darwin operating system.

FSF GCC on Darwin does not create "universal" object files; it will create an object file for the single architecture that it was built to target. Apple's GCC on Darwin does create "universal" files if multiple -arch options are used; it does so by running the compiler or linker multiple times and joining the results together with lipo.

The subtype of the file created (like ppc7400 or ppc970 or i686) is determined by the flags that specify the ISA that GCC is targetting, like -mcpu or -march. The -force_cpusubtype_ALL option can be used to override this.

The Darwin tools vary in their behavior when presented with an ISA mismatch. The assembler, as, will only permit instructions to be used that are valid for the subtype of the file it is generating, so you cannot put 64-bit instructions in an ppc750 object file. The linker for shared libraries, /usr/bin/libtool, will fail and print an error if asked to create a shared library with a less restrictive subtype than its input files (for instance, trying to put a ppc970 object file in a ppc7400 library). The linker for executables, ld, will quietly give the executable the most restrictive subtype of any of its input files.

-Fdir
    Add the framework directory dir to the head of the list of directories to be searched for header files. These directories are interleaved with those specified by -I options and are scanned in a left-to-right order.

    A framework directory is a directory with frameworks in it. A framework is a directory with a "Headers" and/or "PrivateHeaders" directory contained directly in it that ends in ".framework". The name of a framework is the name of this directory excluding the ".framework". Headers associated with the framework are found in one of those two directories, with "Headers" being searched first. A subframework is a framework directory that is in a framework's "Frameworks" directory. Includes of subframework headers can only appear in a header of a framework that contains the subframework, or in a sibling subframework header. Two subframeworks are siblings if they occur in the same framework. A subframework should not have the same name as a framework, a warning will be issued if this is violated. Currently a subframework cannot have subframeworks, in the future, the mechanism may be extended to support this. The standard frameworks can be found in "/System/Library/Frameworks" and "/Library/Frameworks". An example include looks like "#include <Framework/header.h>", where Framework denotes the name of the framework and header.h is found in the "PrivateHeaders" or "Headers" directory.

-iframeworkdir
    Like -F except the directory is a treated as a system directory. The main effect is to not warn about constructs contained within header files found via dir.

-gused
    Emit debugging information for symbols that are used. For STABS debugging format, this enables -feliminate-unused-debug-symbols. This is by default ON.

-gfull
    Emit debugging information for all symbols and types.

-mmacosx-version-min=version
    The earliest version of MacOS X that this executable will run on is version. Typical values of version include 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3.9.

    This value can also be set with the MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET environment variable. If both the command-line option is specified and the environment variable is set, the command-line option will take precedence.

    If the compiler was built to use the system's headers by default, then the default for this option is the system version on which the compiler is running, otherwise the default is to make choices which are compatible with as many systems and code bases as possible.

    This value is not set by default for ARM targets.

-miphoneos-version-min=version
    The earliest version of iPhone OS that this executable will run on is version.

    This value can also be set with the IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET environment variable. If both the command-line option is specified and the environment variable is set, the command-line option will take precedence.

    On ARM targets, if not specified by the command-line option or environment variable, this value defaults to 2.0.

-mkernel
    Enable kernel development mode. The -mkernel option sets -static, -fno-common, -fno-builtin, -fno-cxa-atexit, -fno-exceptions, -fno-non-call-exceptions, -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables, -fapple-kext, -fno-weak and -fno-rtti where applicable. This mode also sets -mno-altivec, -msoft-float and -mlong-branch for PowerPC targets, -mno-red-zone on x86_64, and -mlong-branch for ARM targets. Of these, only -msoft-float can be changed which is useful in a kext that wishes to use the hardware floating point unit. -dynamic can be used to override the effects of -static on the assembler to enable the use of weak_import.

-mone-byte-bool
    Override the defaults for bool so that sizeof(bool)==1. By default sizeof(bool) is 4 when compiling for Darwin/PowerPC and 1 when compiling for Darwin/x86, so this option has no effect on x86.

    Warning: The -mone-byte-bool switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Using this switch may require recompiling all other modules in a program, including system libraries. Use this switch to conform to a non-default data model.

-mfix-and-continue
-ffix-and-continue
-findirect-data
    Generate code suitable for fast turn around development. Needed to enable gdb to dynamically load ".o" files into already running programs. -findirect-data and -ffix-and-continue are provided for backwards compatibility.

-fapple-kext
-findirect-virtual-calls
-fterminated-vtables
    Alter vtables, destructors, and other implementation details to more closely resemble the GCC 2.95 ABI for PowerPC and 32-bit i386. This is to make kernel extensions loadable by Darwin kernels, and is required to build any Darwin kernel extension. In addition, virtual calls are not made directly, instead, code is generated to always go through the virtual table, as virtual tables can be patched by the kernel module loader. Vtables are altered by adding a zero word at the end of every vtable. -findirect-virtual-calls and -fterminated-vtables are accepted for backwards compatibility but will be removed in the future. Additionally implies most of -mkernel except for -msoft-float and -mlong-branch for PowerPC targets. (APPLE ONLY)

-mpascal-strings
    Allow Pascal-style string literals to be constructed. This option implies -Wpointer-sign so that conversions between Pascal-style strings and C-style strings are warned about. (APPLE ONLY)

-all_load
    Loads all members of static archive libraries. See man ld(1) for more information.

-arch_errors_fatal
    Cause the errors having to do with files that have the wrong architecture to be fatal.

-bind_at_load
    Causes the output file to be marked such that the dynamic linker will bind all undefined references when the file is loaded or launched.

-bundle
    Produce a Mach-o bundle format file. See man ld(1) for more information.

-bundle_loader executable
    This option specifies the executable that will be loading the build output file being linked. See man ld(1) for more information.

-dynamiclib
    When passed this option, GCC will produce a dynamic library instead of an executable when linking, using the Darwin libtool command.

-force_cpusubtype_ALL
    This causes GCC's output file to have the ALL subtype, instead of one controlled by the -mcpu or -march option.

-force_load  library_name
    Loads all members of named static archive library. See man ld(1) for more information.

-allowable_client  client_name
-client_name
-compatibility_version
-current_version
-dead_strip
-dependency-file
-dylib_file
-dylinker_install_name
-dynamic
-exported_symbols_list
-filelist
-flat_namespace
-force_flat_namespace
-headerpad_max_install_names
-image_base
-init
-install_name
-keep_private_externs
-multi_module
-multiply_defined
-multiply_defined_unused
-noall_load
-no_dead_strip_inits_and_terms
-nofixprebinding
-nomultidefs
-noprebind
-noseglinkedit
-pagezero_size
-prebind
-prebind_all_twolevel_modules
-private_bundle
-read_only_relocs
-sectalign
-sectobjectsymbols
-whyload
-seg1addr
-sectcreate
-sectobjectsymbols
-sectorder
-segaddr
-segs_read_only_addr
-segs_read_write_addr
-seg_addr_table
-seg_addr_table_filename
-seglinkedit
-segprot
-segs_read_only_addr
-segs_read_write_addr
-single_module
-static
-sub_library
-sub_umbrella
-twolevel_namespace
-umbrella
-undefined
-unexported_symbols_list
-weak_reference_mismatches
-whatsloaded
    These options are passed to the Darwin linker. The Darwin linker man page describes them in detail.

Intel 386 and AMD x86-64 Options

These -m options are defined for the i386 and x86-64 family of computers:

-mtune=cpu-type
    Tune to cpu-type everything applicable about the generated code, except for the ABI and the set of available instructions. The choices for cpu-type are:

    generic
        Produce code optimized for the most common IA32/AMD64/EM64T processors. If you know the CPU on which your code will run, then you should use the corresponding -mtune option instead of -mtune=generic. But, if you do not know exactly what CPU users of your application will have, then you should use this option.

        As new processors are deployed in the marketplace, the behavior of this option will change. Therefore, if you upgrade to a newer version of GCC, the code generated option will change to reflect the processors that were most common when that version of GCC was released.

        There is no -march=generic option because -march indicates the instruction set the compiler can use, and there is no generic instruction set applicable to all processors. In contrast, -mtune indicates the processor (or, in this case, collection of processors) for which the code is optimized.

    native
        This selects the CPU to tune for at compilation time by determining the processor type of the compiling machine. Using -mtune=native will produce code optimized for the local machine under the constraints of the selected instruction set. Using -march=native will enable all instruction subsets supported by the local machine (hence the result might not run on different machines).

    i386
        Original Intel's i386 CPU.

    i486
        Intel's i486 CPU. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.)

    i586, pentium
        Intel Pentium CPU with no MMX support.

    pentium-mmx
        Intel PentiumMMX CPU based on Pentium core with MMX instruction set support.

    pentiumpro
        Intel PentiumPro CPU.

    i686
        Same as "generic", but when used as "march" option, PentiumPro instruction set will be used, so the code will run on all i686 family chips.

    pentium2
        Intel Pentium2 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX instruction set support.

    pentium3, pentium3m
        Intel Pentium3 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX and SSE instruction set support.

    pentium-m
        Low power version of Intel Pentium3 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support. Used by Centrino notebooks.

    pentium4, pentium4m
        Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support.

    prescott
        Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support.

    nocona
        Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support.

    core2
        Intel Core2 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support.

    k6  AMD K6 CPU with MMX instruction set support.

    k6-2, k6-3
        Improved versions of AMD K6 CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support.

    athlon, athlon-tbird
        AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and SSE prefetch instructions support.

    athlon-4, athlon-xp, athlon-mp
        Improved AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and full SSE instruction set support.

    k8, opteron, athlon64, athlon-fx
        AMD K8 core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and 64-bit instruction set extensions.)

    winchip-c6
        IDT Winchip C6 CPU, dealt in same way as i486 with additional MMX instruction set support.

    winchip2
        IDT Winchip2 CPU, dealt in same way as i486 with additional MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support.

    c3  Via C3 CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.)

    c3-2
        Via C3-2 CPU with MMX and SSE instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.)

    While picking a specific cpu-type will schedule things appropriately for that particular chip, the compiler will not generate any code that does not run on the i386 without the -march=cpu-type option being used.

-march=cpu-type
    Generate instructions for the machine type cpu-type. The choices for cpu-type are the same as for -mtune. Moreover, specifying -march=cpu-type implies -mtune=cpu-type.

-mcpu=cpu-type
    A deprecated synonym for -mtune.

-m386
-m486
-mpentium
-mpentiumpro
    These options are synonyms for -mtune=i386, -mtune=i486, -mtune=pentium, and -mtune=pentiumpro respectively. These synonyms are deprecated.

-mfpmath=unit
    Generate floating point arithmetics for selected unit unit. The choices for unit are:

    387 Use the standard 387 floating point coprocessor present majority of chips and emulated otherwise. Code compiled with this option will run almost everywhere. The temporary results are computed in 80bit precision instead of precision specified by the type resulting in slightly different results compared to most of other chips. See -ffloat-store for more detailed description.

        This is the default choice for i386 compiler.

    sse Use scalar floating point instructions present in the SSE instruction set. This instruction set is supported by Pentium3 and newer chips, in the AMD line by Athlon-4, Athlon-xp and Athlon-mp chips. The earlier version of SSE instruction set supports only single precision arithmetics, thus the double and extended precision arithmetics is still done using 387. Later version, present only in Pentium4 and the future AMD x86-64 chips supports double precision arithmetics too.

        For the i386 compiler, you need to use -march=cpu-type, -msse or -msse2 switches to enable SSE extensions and make this option effective. For the x86-64 compiler, these extensions are enabled by default.

        The resulting code should be considerably faster in the majority of cases and avoid the numerical instability problems of 387 code, but may break some existing code that expects temporaries to be 80bit.

        This is the default choice for the x86-64 compiler.

    sse,387
        Attempt to utilize both instruction sets at once. This effectively double the amount of available registers and on chips with separate execution units for 387 and SSE the execution resources too. Use this option with care, as it is still experimental, because the GCC register allocator does not model separate functional units well resulting in instable performance.

-masm=dialect
    Output asm instructions using selected dialect. Supported choices are intel or att (the default one). Darwin does not support intel.

-mieee-fp
-mno-ieee-fp
    Control whether or not the compiler uses IEEE floating point comparisons. These handle correctly the case where the result of a comparison is unordered.

-msoft-float
    Generate output containing library calls for floating point. Warning: the requisite libraries are not part of GCC. Normally the facilities of the machine's usual C compiler are used, but this can't be done directly in cross-compilation. You must make your own arrangements to provide suitable library functions for cross-compilation.

    On machines where a function returns floating point results in the 80387 register stack, some floating point opcodes may be emitted even if -msoft-float is used.

-mno-fp-ret-in-387
    Do not use the FPU registers for return values of functions.

    The usual calling convention has functions return values of types "float" and "double" in an FPU register, even if there is no FPU. The idea is that the operating system should emulate an FPU.

    The option -mno-fp-ret-in-387 causes such values to be returned in ordinary CPU registers instead.

-mno-fancy-math-387
    Some 387 emulators do not support the "sin", "cos" and "sqrt" instructions for the 387. Specify this option to avoid generating those instructions. This option is the default on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. This option is overridden when -march indicates that the target cpu will always have an FPU and so the instruction will not need emulation. As of revision 2.6.1, these instructions are not generated unless you also use the -funsafe-math-optimizations switch.

-malign-double
-mno-align-double
    Control whether GCC aligns "double", "long double", and "long long" variables on a two word boundary or a one word boundary. Aligning "double" variables on a two word boundary will produce code that runs somewhat faster on a Pentium at the expense of more memory.

    On x86-64, -malign-double is enabled by default.

    Warning: if you use the -malign-double switch, structures containing the above types will be aligned differently than the published application binary interface specifications for the 386 and will not be binary compatible with structures in code compiled without that switch.

-m96bit-long-double
-m128bit-long-double
    These switches control the size of "long double" type. The i386 application binary interface specifies the size to be 96 bits, so -m96bit-long-double is the default in 32 bit mode.

    Modern architectures (Pentium and newer) would prefer "long double" to be aligned to an 8 or 16 byte boundary. In arrays or structures conforming to the ABI, this would not be possible. So specifying a -m128bit-long-double will align "long double" to a 16 byte boundary by padding the "long double" with an additional 32 bit zero.

    In the x86-64 compiler, -m128bit-long-double is the default choice as its ABI specifies that "long double" is to be aligned on 16 byte boundary.

    Notice that neither of these options enable any extra precision over the x87 standard of 80 bits for a "long double".

    Warning: if you override the default value for your target ABI, the structures and arrays containing "long double" variables will change their size as well as function calling convention for function taking "long double" will be modified. Hence they will not be binary compatible with arrays or structures in code compiled without that switch.

-mmlarge-data-threshold=number
    When -mcmodel=medium is specified, the data greater than threshold are placed in large data section. This value must be the same across all object linked into the binary and defaults to 65535.

-msvr3-shlib
-mno-svr3-shlib
    Control whether GCC places uninitialized local variables into the "bss" or "data" segments. -msvr3-shlib places them into "bss". These options are meaningful only on System V Release 3.

-mrtd
    Use a different function-calling convention, in which functions that take a fixed number of arguments return with the "ret" num instruction, which pops their arguments while returning. This saves one instruction in the caller since there is no need to pop the arguments there.

    You can specify that an individual function is called with this calling sequence with the function attribute stdcall. You can also override the -mrtd option by using the function attribute cdecl.

    Warning: this calling convention is incompatible with the one normally used on Unix, so you cannot use it if you need to call libraries compiled with the Unix compiler.

    Also, you must provide function prototypes for all functions that take variable numbers of arguments (including "printf"); otherwise incorrect code will be generated for calls to those functions.

    In addition, seriously incorrect code will result if you call a function with too many arguments. (Normally, extra arguments are harmlessly ignored.)

-mregparm=num
    Control how many registers are used to pass integer arguments. By default, no registers are used to pass arguments, and at most 3 registers can be used. You can control this behavior for a specific function by using the function attribute regparm.

    Warning: if you use this switch, and num is nonzero, then you must build all modules with the same value, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and startup modules.

-msseregparm
    Use SSE register passing conventions for float and double arguments and return values. You can control this behavior for a specific function by using the function attribute sseregparm.

    Warning: if you use this switch then you must build all modules with the same value, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and startup modules.

-mstackrealign
    Realign the stack at entry. On the Intel x86, the -mstackrealign option will generate an alternate prologue and epilogue that realigns the runtime stack. This supports mixing legacy codes that keep a 4-byte aligned stack with modern codes that keep a 16-byte stack for SSE compatibility. The alternate prologue and epilogue are slower and bigger than the regular ones, and the alternate prologue requires an extra scratch register; this lowers the number of registers available if used in conjunction with the "regparm" attribute. The -mstackrealign option is incompatible with the nested function prologue; this is considered a hard error. See also the attribute "force_align_arg_pointer", applicable to individual functions.

-mpreferred-stack-boundary=num
    Attempt to keep the stack boundary aligned to a 2 raised to num byte boundary. If -mpreferred-stack-boundary is not specified, the default is 4 (16 bytes or 128 bits).

    On Pentium and PentiumPro, "double" and "long double" values should be aligned to an 8 byte boundary (see -malign-double) or suffer significant run time performance penalties. On Pentium III, the Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE) data type "__m128" may not work properly if it is not 16 byte aligned.

    To ensure proper alignment of this values on the stack, the stack boundary must be as aligned as that required by any value stored on the stack. Further, every function must be generated such that it keeps the stack aligned. Thus calling a function compiled with a higher preferred stack boundary from a function compiled with a lower preferred stack boundary will most likely misalign the stack. It is recommended that libraries that use callbacks always use the default setting.

    This extra alignment does consume extra stack space, and generally increases code size. Code that is sensitive to stack space usage, such as embedded systems and operating system kernels, may want to reduce the preferred alignment to -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2.

-mmmx
-mno-mmx
-msse
-mno-sse
-msse2
-mno-sse2
-msse3
-mno-sse3
-mssse3
-mno-ssse3
-msse4.1
-mno-sse4.1
-msse4.2
-mno-sse4.2
-msse4
-mno-sse4
-msse4a
-mno-sse4a
-m3dnow
-mno-3dnow
    These switches enable or disable the use of instructions in the MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, 3Dnow, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and SSE4A extended instruction sets. These extensions are also available as built-in functions: see X86 Built-in Functions, for details of the functions enabled and disabled by these switches.

    To have SSE/SSE2 instructions generated automatically from floating-point code (as opposed to 387 instructions), see -mfpmath=sse.

    These options will enable GCC to use these extended instructions in generated code, even without -mfpmath=sse. Applications which perform runtime CPU detection must compile separate files for each supported architecture, using the appropriate flags. In particular, the file containing the CPU detection code should be compiled without these options.

-mpush-args
-mno-push-args
    Use PUSH operations to store outgoing parameters. This method is shorter and usually equally fast as method using SUB/MOV operations and is enabled by default. In some cases disabling it may improve performance because of improved scheduling and reduced dependencies.

-maccumulate-outgoing-args
    If enabled, the maximum amount of space required for outgoing arguments will be computed in the function prologue. This is faster on most modern CPUs because of reduced dependencies, improved scheduling and reduced stack usage when preferred stack boundary is not equal to 2. The drawback is a notable increase in code size. This switch implies -mno-push-args.

-mthreads
    Support thread-safe exception handling on Mingw32. Code that relies on thread-safe exception handling must compile and link all code with the -mthreads option. When compiling, -mthreads defines -D_MT; when linking, it links in a special thread helper library -lmingwthrd which cleans up per thread exception handling data.

-mno-align-stringops
    Do not align destination of inlined string operations. This switch reduces code size and improves performance in case the destination is already aligned, but GCC doesn't know about it.

-minline-all-stringops
    By default GCC inlines string operations only when destination is known to be aligned at least to 4 byte boundary. This enables more inlining, increase code size, but may improve performance of code that depends on fast memcpy, strlen and memset for short lengths.

-momit-leaf-frame-pointer
    Don't keep the frame pointer in a register for leaf functions. This avoids the instructions to save, set up and restore frame pointers and makes an extra register available in leaf functions. The option -fomit-frame-pointer removes the frame pointer for all functions which might make debugging harder.

-mtls-direct-seg-refs
-mno-tls-direct-seg-refs
    Controls whether TLS variables may be accessed with offsets from the TLS segment register (%gs for 32-bit, %fs for 64-bit), or whether the thread base pointer must be added. Whether or not this is legal depends on the operating system, and whether it maps the segment to cover the entire TLS area.

    For systems that use GNU libc, the default is on.

These -m switches are supported in addition to the above on AMD x86-64 processors in 64-bit environments.

-m32
-m64
    Generate code for a 32-bit or 64-bit environment. The 32-bit environment sets int, long and pointer to 32 bits and generates code that runs on any i386 system. The 64-bit environment sets int to 32 bits and long and pointer to 64 bits and generates code for AMD's x86-64 architecture. For darwin only the -m64 option turns off the -fno-pic and -mdynamic-no-pic options.

-mno-red-zone
    Do not use a so called red zone for x86-64 code. The red zone is mandated by the x86-64 ABI, it is a 128-byte area beyond the location of the stack pointer that will not be modified by signal or interrupt handlers and therefore can be used for temporary data without adjusting the stack pointer. The flag -mno-red-zone disables this red zone.

-mcmodel=small
    Generate code for the small code model: the program and its symbols must be linked in the lower 2 GB of the address space. Pointers are 64 bits. Programs can be statically or dynamically linked. This is the default code model.

-mcmodel=kernel
    Generate code for the kernel code model. The kernel runs in the negative 2 GB of the address space. This model has to be used for Linux kernel code.

-mcmodel=medium
    Generate code for the medium model: The program is linked in the lower 2 GB of the address space but symbols can be located anywhere in the address space. Programs can be statically or dynamically linked, but building of shared libraries are not supported with the medium model.

-mcmodel=large
    Generate code for the large model: This model makes no assumptions about addresses and sizes of sections. Currently GCC does not implement this model.

-mms-bitfields
    Set the default structure layout to be compatible with the Microsoft compiler standard. This is equivalent to adding an "ms_struct" attribute to each structure and union tag definition. The default is mno-ms-bitfields.

PowerPC Options

These are listed under

IBM RS/6000 and PowerPC Options

These -m options are defined for the IBM RS/6000 and PowerPC:

-mpower
-mno-power
-mpower2
-mno-power2
-mpowerpc
-mno-powerpc
-mpowerpc-gpopt
-mno-powerpc-gpopt
-mpowerpc-gfxopt
-mno-powerpc-gfxopt
-mpowerpc64
-mno-powerpc64
-mmfcrf
-mno-mfcrf
-mpopcntb
-mno-popcntb
-mfprnd
-mno-fprnd
    GCC supports two related instruction set architectures for the RS/6000 and PowerPC. The POWER instruction set are those instructions supported by the rios chip set used in the original RS/6000 systems and the PowerPC instruction set is the architecture of the Freescale MPC5xx, MPC6xx, MPC8xx microprocessors, and the IBM 4xx, 6xx, and follow-on microprocessors.

    Neither architecture is a subset of the other. However there is a large common subset of instructions supported by both. An MQ register is included in processors supporting the POWER architecture.

    You use these options to specify which instructions are available on the processor you are using. The default value of these options is determined when configuring GCC. Specifying the -mcpu=cpu_type overrides the specification of these options. We recommend you use the -mcpu=cpu_type option rather than the options listed above.

    The -mpower option allows GCC to generate instructions that are found only in the POWER architecture and to use the MQ register. Specifying -mpower2 implies -power and also allows GCC to generate instructions that are present in the POWER2 architecture but not the original POWER architecture.

    The -mpowerpc option allows GCC to generate instructions that are found only in the 32-bit subset of the PowerPC architecture. Specifying -mpowerpc-gpopt implies -mpowerpc and also allows GCC to use the optional PowerPC architecture instructions in the General Purpose group, including floating-point square root. Specifying -mpowerpc-gfxopt implies -mpowerpc and also allows GCC to use the optional PowerPC architecture instructions in the Graphics group, including floating-point select.

    The -mmfcrf option allows GCC to generate the move from condition register field instruction implemented on the POWER4 processor and other processors that support the PowerPC V2.01 architecture. The -mpopcntb option allows GCC to generate the popcount and double precision FP reciprocal estimate instruction implemented on the POWER5 processor and other processors that support the PowerPC V2.02 architecture. The -mfprnd option allows GCC to generate the FP round to integer instructions implemented on the POWER5+ processor and other processors that support the PowerPC V2.03 architecture.

    The -mpowerpc64 option allows GCC to generate the additional 64-bit instructions that are found in the full PowerPC64 architecture and to treat GPRs as 64-bit, doubleword quantities. GCC defaults to -mno-powerpc64.

    If you specify both -mno-power and -mno-powerpc, GCC will use only the instructions in the common subset of both architectures plus some special AIX common-mode calls, and will not use the MQ register. Specifying both -mpower and -mpowerpc permits GCC to use any instruction from either architecture and to allow use of the MQ register; specify this for the Motorola MPC601.

-mnew-mnemonics
-mold-mnemonics
    Select which mnemonics to use in the generated assembler code. With -mnew-mnemonics, GCC uses the assembler mnemonics defined for the PowerPC architecture. With -mold-mnemonics it uses the assembler mnemonics defined for the POWER architecture. Instructions defined in only one architecture have only one mnemonic; GCC uses that mnemonic irrespective of which of these options is specified.

    GCC defaults to the mnemonics appropriate for the architecture in use. Specifying -mcpu=cpu_type sometimes overrides the value of these option. Unless you are building a cross-compiler, you should normally not specify either -mnew-mnemonics or -mold-mnemonics, but should instead accept the default.

-mcpu=cpu_type
    Set architecture type, register usage, choice of mnemonics, and instruction scheduling parameters for machine type cpu_type. Supported values for cpu_type are 401, 403, 405, 405fp, 440, 440fp, 505, 601, 602, 603, 603e, 604, 604e, 620, 630, 740, 7400, 7450, 750, 801, 821, 823, 860, 970, 8540, ec603e, G3, G4, G5, power, power2, power3, power4, power5, power5+, power6, common, powerpc, powerpc64, rios, rios1, rios2, rsc, and rs64.

    -mcpu=common selects a completely generic processor. Code generated under this option will run on any POWER or PowerPC processor. GCC will use only the instructions in the common subset of both architectures, and will not use the MQ register. GCC assumes a generic processor model for scheduling purposes.

    -mcpu=power, -mcpu=power2, -mcpu=powerpc, and -mcpu=powerpc64 specify generic POWER, POWER2, pure 32-bit PowerPC (i.e., not MPC601), and 64-bit PowerPC architecture machine types, with an appropriate, generic processor model assumed for scheduling purposes.

    The other options specify a specific processor. Code generated under those options will run best on that processor, and may not run at all on others.

    The -mcpu options automatically enable or disable the following options: -maltivec, -mfprnd, -mhard-float, -mmfcrf, -mmultiple, -mnew-mnemonics, -mpopcntb, -mpower, -mpower2, -mpowerpc64, -mpowerpc-gpopt, -mpowerpc-gfxopt, -mstring, -mmulhw, -mdlmzb. The particular options set for any particular CPU will vary between compiler versions, depending on what setting seems to produce optimal code for that CPU; it doesn't necessarily reflect the actual hardware's capabilities. If you wish to set an individual option to a particular value, you may specify it after the -mcpu option, like -mcpu=970 -mno-altivec.

    On AIX, the -maltivec and -mpowerpc64 options are not enabled or disabled by the -mcpu option at present because AIX does not have full support for these options. You may still enable or disable them individually if you're sure it'll work in your environment.

-mtune=cpu_type
    Set the instruction scheduling parameters for machine type cpu_type, but do not set the architecture type, register usage, or choice of mnemonics, as -mcpu=cpu_type would. The same values for cpu_type are used for -mtune as for -mcpu. If both are specified, the code generated will use the architecture, registers, and mnemonics set by -mcpu, but the scheduling parameters set by -mtune.

-mswdiv
-mno-swdiv
    Generate code to compute division as reciprocal estimate and iterative refinement, creating opportunities for increased throughput. This feature requires: optional PowerPC Graphics instruction set for single precision and FRE instruction for double precision, assuming divides cannot generate user-visible traps, and the domain values not include Infinities, denormals or zero denominator.

-maltivec
-mno-altivec
    Generate code that uses (does not use) AltiVec instructions, and also enable the use of built-in functions that allow more direct access to the AltiVec instruction set. You may also need to set -mabi=altivec to adjust the current ABI with AltiVec ABI enhancements.

-mpim-altivec
-mno-pim-altivec
    Enable (or disable) built-in compiler support for the syntactic extensions as well as operations and predicates defined in the Motorola AltiVec Technology Programming Interface Manual (PIM). This includes the recognition of "vector" and "pixel" as (context-dependent) keywords, the definition of built-in functions such as "vec_add", and the use of parenthesized comma expression as AltiVec literals. Note that unlike the option -maltivec, the extension does not require the inclusion of any special header files; if "<altivec.h>" is included, a warning will be issued and the contents of the header will be ignored. The preprocessor shall provide an "__APPLE_ALTIVEC__" manifest constant when -mpim-altivec is specified. (APPLE ONLY)

    In addition, the -mpim-altivec option disables the inlining of functions containing AltiVec instructions into functions that do not make use of the vector unit. Certain other optimizations, such as inline vectorization of "memset" and "memcpy" calls, are also disabled. These adjustments make it possible to compile programs whose use of AltiVec instructions is preceded by a run-time check for the presence of AltiVec functionality, and that can therefore be made to run on G3 processors. Note that all of these optimizations may be re-enabled by supplying the -maltivec option, or an -mcpu option specifying a processor that supports AltiVec instructions.

-mvrsave
-mno-vrsave
    Generate VRSAVE instructions when generating AltiVec code.

-msecure-plt
    Generate code that allows ld and ld.so to build executables and shared libraries with non-exec .plt and .got sections. This is a PowerPC 32-bit SYSV ABI option.

-mbss-plt
    Generate code that uses a BSS .plt section that ld.so fills in, and requires .plt and .got sections that are both writable and executable. This is a PowerPC 32-bit SYSV ABI option.

-misel
-mno-isel
    This switch enables or disables the generation of ISEL instructions.

-misel=yes/no
    This switch has been deprecated. Use -misel and -mno-isel instead.

-mspe
-mno-spe
    This switch enables or disables the generation of SPE simd instructions.

-mspe=yes/no
    This option has been deprecated. Use -mspe and -mno-spe instead.

-mfloat-gprs=yes/single/double/no
-mfloat-gprs
    This switch enables or disables the generation of floating point operations on the general purpose registers for architectures that support it.

    The argument yes or single enables the use of single-precision floating point operations.

    The argument double enables the use of single and double-precision floating point operations.

    The argument no disables floating point operations on the general purpose registers.

    This option is currently only available on the MPC854x.

-m32
-m64
    Generate code for 32-bit or 64-bit environments of Darwin and SVR4 targets (including GNU/Linux). The 32-bit environment sets int, long and pointer to 32 bits and generates code that runs on any PowerPC variant. The 64-bit environment sets int to 32 bits and long and pointer to 64 bits, and generates code for PowerPC64, as for -mpowerpc64.

-mfull-toc
-mno-fp-in-toc
-mno-sum-in-toc
-mminimal-toc
    Modify generation of the TOC (Table Of Contents), which is created for every executable file. The -mfull-toc option is selected by default. In that case, GCC will allocate at least one TOC entry for each unique non-automatic variable reference in your program. GCC will also place floating-point constants in the TOC. However, only 16,384 entries are available in the TOC.

    If you receive a linker error message that saying you have overflowed the available TOC space, you can reduce the amount of TOC space used with the -mno-fp-in-toc and -mno-sum-in-toc options. -mno-fp-in-toc prevents GCC from putting floating-point constants in the TOC and -mno-sum-in-toc forces GCC to generate code to calculate the sum of an address and a constant at run-time instead of putting that sum into the TOC. You may specify one or both of these options. Each causes GCC to produce very slightly slower and larger code at the expense of conserving TOC space.

    If you still run out of space in the TOC even when you specify both of these options, specify -mminimal-toc instead. This option causes GCC to make only one TOC entry for every file. When you specify this option, GCC will produce code that is slower and larger but which uses extremely little TOC space. You may wish to use this option only on files that contain less frequently executed code.

-maix64
-maix32
    Enable 64-bit AIX ABI and calling convention: 64-bit pointers, 64-bit "long" type, and the infrastructure needed to support them. Specifying -maix64 implies -mpowerpc64 and -mpowerpc, while -maix32 disables the 64-bit ABI and implies -mno-powerpc64. GCC defaults to -maix32.

-mxl-compat
-mno-xl-compat
    Produce code that conforms more closely to IBM XL compiler semantics when using AIX-compatible ABI. Pass floating-point arguments to prototyped functions beyond the register save area (RSA) on the stack in addition to argument FPRs. Do not assume that most significant double in 128-bit long double value is properly rounded when comparing values and converting to double. Use XL symbol names for long double support routines.

    The AIX calling convention was extended but not initially documented to handle an obscure K&R C case of calling a function that takes the address of its arguments with fewer arguments than declared. IBM XL compilers access floating point arguments which do not fit in the RSA from the stack when a subroutine is compiled without optimization. Because always storing floating-point arguments on the stack is inefficient and rarely needed, this option is not enabled by default and only is necessary when calling subroutines compiled by IBM XL compilers without optimization.

-mpe
    Support IBM RS/6000 SP Parallel Environment (PE). Link an application written to use message passing with special startup code to enable the application to run. The system must have PE installed in the standard location (/usr/lpp/ppe.poe/), or the specs file must be overridden with the -specs= option to specify the appropriate directory location. The Parallel Environment does not support threads, so the -mpe option and the -pthread option are incompatible.

-malign-natural
-malign-power
    On AIX, 32-bit Darwin, and 64-bit PowerPC GNU/Linux, the option -malign-natural overrides the ABI-defined alignment of larger types, such as floating-point doubles, on their natural size-based boundary. The option -malign-power instructs GCC to follow the ABI-specified alignment rules. GCC defaults to the standard alignment defined in the ABI.

    On 64-bit Darwin, natural alignment is the default, and -malign-power is not supported.

-msoft-float
-mhard-float
    Generate code that does not use (uses) the floating-point register set. Software floating point emulation is provided if you use the -msoft-float option, and pass the option to GCC when linking.

    (APPLE ONLY) While the -msoft-float option is supported, the libraries that do the floating point emulation are not shipped on Apple PowerPCs, with the effect that the emulation does not work. However, the option may be useful for a different reason. Normally the compiler can use floating point registers in contexts where you might not expect it, for example, to copy data from one memory location to another. The -msoft-float option will prevent it from doing this.

-mmultiple
-mno-multiple
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the load multiple word instructions and the store multiple word instructions. These instructions are generated by default on POWER systems, and not generated on PowerPC systems. Do not use -mmultiple on little endian PowerPC systems, since those instructions do not work when the processor is in little endian mode. The exceptions are PPC740 and PPC750 which permit the instructions usage in little endian mode.

-mstring
-mno-string
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the load string instructions and the store string word instructions to save multiple registers and do small block moves. These instructions are generated by default on POWER systems, and not generated on PowerPC systems. Do not use -mstring on little endian PowerPC systems, since those instructions do not work when the processor is in little endian mode. The exceptions are PPC740 and PPC750 which permit the instructions usage in little endian mode.

-mupdate
-mno-update
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the load or store instructions that update the base register to the address of the calculated memory location. These instructions are generated by default. If you use -mno-update, there is a small window between the time that the stack pointer is updated and the address of the previous frame is stored, which means code that walks the stack frame across interrupts or signals may get corrupted data.

-mfused-madd
-mno-fused-madd
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the floating point multiply and accumulate instructions. These instructions are generated by default if hardware floating is used.

-mmulhw
-mno-mulhw
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the half-word multiply and multiply-accumulate instructions on the IBM 405 and 440 processors. These instructions are generated by default when targetting those processors.

-mdlmzb
-mno-dlmzb
    Generate code that uses (does not use) the string-search dlmzb instruction on the IBM 405 and 440 processors. This instruction is generated by default when targetting those processors.

-mno-bit-align
-mbit-align
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems do not (do) force structures and unions that contain bit-fields to be aligned to the base type of the bit-field.

    For example, by default a structure containing nothing but 8 "unsigned" bit-fields of length 1 would be aligned to a 4 byte boundary and have a size of 4 bytes. By using -mno-bit-align, the structure would be aligned to a 1 byte boundary and be one byte in size.

-mno-strict-align
-mstrict-align
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems do not (do) assume that unaligned memory references will be handled by the system.

-mrelocatable
-mno-relocatable
    On embedded PowerPC systems generate code that allows (does not allow) the program to be relocated to a different address at runtime. If you use -mrelocatable on any module, all objects linked together must be compiled with -mrelocatable or -mrelocatable-lib.

-mrelocatable-lib
-mno-relocatable-lib
    On embedded PowerPC systems generate code that allows (does not allow) the program to be relocated to a different address at runtime. Modules compiled with -mrelocatable-lib can be linked with either modules compiled without -mrelocatable and -mrelocatable-lib or with modules compiled with the -mrelocatable options.

-mno-toc
-mtoc
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems do not (do) assume that register 2 contains a pointer to a global area pointing to the addresses used in the program.

-mlittle
-mlittle-endian
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the processor in little endian mode. The -mlittle-endian option is the same as -mlittle.

-mbig
-mbig-endian
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the processor in big endian mode. The -mbig-endian option is the same as -mbig.

-mdynamic-no-pic
    On Darwin and Mac OS X systems, compile code so that it is not relocatable, but that its external references are relocatable. The resulting code is suitable for applications, but not shared libraries.

-mprioritize-restricted-insns=priority
    This option controls the priority that is assigned to dispatch-slot restricted instructions during the second scheduling pass. The argument priority takes the value 0/1/2 to assign no/highest/second-highest priority to dispatch slot restricted instructions.

-msched-costly-dep=dependence_type
    This option controls which dependences are considered costly by the target during instruction scheduling. The argument dependence_type takes one of the following values: no: no dependence is costly, all: all dependences are costly, true_store_to_load: a true dependence from store to load is costly, store_to_load: any dependence from store to load is costly, number: any dependence which latency >= number is costly.

-minsert-sched-nops=scheme
    This option controls which nop insertion scheme will be used during the second scheduling pass. The argument scheme takes one of the following values: no: Don't insert nops. pad: Pad with nops any dispatch group which has vacant issue slots, according to the scheduler's grouping. regroup_exact: Insert nops to force costly dependent insns into separate groups. Insert exactly as many nops as needed to force an insn to a new group, according to the estimated processor grouping. number: Insert nops to force costly dependent insns into separate groups. Insert number nops to force an insn to a new group.

-mcall-sysv
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code using calling conventions that adheres to the March 1995 draft of the System V Application Binary Interface, PowerPC processor supplement. This is the default unless you configured GCC using powerpc-*-eabiaix.

-mcall-sysv-eabi
    Specify both -mcall-sysv and -meabi options.

-mcall-sysv-noeabi
    Specify both -mcall-sysv and -mno-eabi options.

-mcall-solaris
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the Solaris operating system.

-mcall-linux
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the Linux-based GNU system.

-mcall-gnu
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the Hurd-based GNU system.

-mcall-netbsd
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the NetBSD operating system.

-maix-struct-return
    Return all structures in memory (as specified by the AIX ABI).

-msvr4-struct-return
    Return structures smaller than 8 bytes in registers (as specified by the SVR4 ABI).

-mabi=abi-type
    Extend the current ABI with a particular extension, or remove such extension. Valid values are altivec, no-altivec, spe, no-spe, ibmlongdouble, ieeelongdouble.

-mabi=spe
    Extend the current ABI with SPE ABI extensions. This does not change the default ABI, instead it adds the SPE ABI extensions to the current ABI.

-mabi=no-spe
    Disable Booke SPE ABI extensions for the current ABI.

-mabi=ibmlongdouble
    Change the current ABI to use IBM extended precision long double. This is a PowerPC 32-bit SYSV ABI option.

-mabi=ieeelongdouble
    Change the current ABI to use IEEE extended precision long double. This is a PowerPC 32-bit Linux ABI option.

-mprototype
-mno-prototype
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems assume that all calls to variable argument functions are properly prototyped. Otherwise, the compiler must insert an instruction before every non prototyped call to set or clear bit 6 of the condition code register (CR) to indicate whether floating point values were passed in the floating point registers in case the function takes a variable arguments. With -mprototype, only calls to prototyped variable argument functions will set or clear the bit.

-msim
    On embedded PowerPC systems, assume that the startup module is called sim-crt0.o and that the standard C libraries are libsim.a and libc.a. This is the default for powerpc-*-eabisim. configurations.

-mmvme
    On embedded PowerPC systems, assume that the startup module is called crt0.o and the standard C libraries are libmvme.a and libc.a.

-mads
    On embedded PowerPC systems, assume that the startup module is called crt0.o and the standard C libraries are libads.a and libc.a.

-myellowknife
    On embedded PowerPC systems, assume that the startup module is called crt0.o and the standard C libraries are libyk.a and libc.a.

-mvxworks
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems, specify that you are compiling for a VxWorks system.

-mwindiss
    Specify that you are compiling for the WindISS simulation environment.

-memb
    On embedded PowerPC systems, set the PPC_EMB bit in the ELF flags header to indicate that eabi extended relocations are used.

-meabi
-mno-eabi
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems do (do not) adhere to the Embedded Applications Binary Interface (eabi) which is a set of modifications to the System V.4 specifications. Selecting -meabi means that the stack is aligned to an 8 byte boundary, a function "__eabi" is called to from "main" to set up the eabi environment, and the -msdata option can use both "r2" and "r13" to point to two separate small data areas. Selecting -mno-eabi means that the stack is aligned to a 16 byte boundary, do not call an initialization function from "main", and the -msdata option will only use "r13" to point to a single small data area. The -meabi option is on by default if you configured GCC using one of the powerpc*-*-eabi* options.

-msdata=eabi
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems, put small initialized "const" global and static data in the .sdata2 section, which is pointed to by register "r2". Put small initialized non-"const" global and static data in the .sdata section, which is pointed to by register "r13". Put small uninitialized global and static data in the .sbss section, which is adjacent to the .sdata section. The -msdata=eabi option is incompatible with the -mrelocatable option. The -msdata=eabi option also sets the -memb option.

-msdata=sysv
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems, put small global and static data in the .sdata section, which is pointed to by register "r13". Put small uninitialized global and static data in the .sbss section, which is adjacent to the .sdata section. The -msdata=sysv option is incompatible with the -mrelocatable option.

-msdata=default
-msdata
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems, if -meabi is used, compile code the same as -msdata=eabi, otherwise compile code the same as -msdata=sysv.

-msdata-data
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems, put small global data in the .sdata section. Put small uninitialized global data in the .sbss section. Do not use register "r13" to address small data however. This is the default behavior unless other -msdata options are used.

-msdata=none
-mno-sdata
    On embedded PowerPC systems, put all initialized global and static data in the .data section, and all uninitialized data in the .bss section.

-G num
    On embedded PowerPC systems, put global and static items less than or equal to num bytes into the small data or bss sections instead of the normal data or bss section. By default, num is 8. The -G num switch is also passed to the linker. All modules should be compiled with the same -G num value.

-mregnames
-mno-regnames
    On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems do (do not) emit register names in the assembly language output using symbolic forms.

-mlongcall
-mno-longcall
-mlong-branch
-mno-long-branch
    By default assume that all calls are far away so that a longer more expensive calling sequence is required. This is required for calls further than 32 megabytes (33,554,432 bytes) from the current location. A short call will be generated if the compiler knows the call cannot be that far away. This setting can be overridden by the "shortcall" function attribute, or by "#pragma longcall(0)".

    Some linkers are capable of detecting out-of-range calls and generating glue code on the fly. On these systems, long calls are unnecessary and generate slower code. As of this writing, the AIX linker can do this, as can the GNU linker for PowerPC/64. It is planned to add this feature to the GNU linker for 32-bit PowerPC systems as well.

    On Darwin/PPC systems, "#pragma longcall" will generate "jbsr callee, L42", plus a "branch island" (glue code). The two target addresses represent the callee and the "branch island". The Darwin/PPC linker will prefer the first address and generate a "bl callee" if the PPC "bl" instruction will reach the callee directly; otherwise, the linker will generate "bl L42" to call the "branch island". The "branch island" is appended to the body of the calling function; it computes the full 32-bit address of the callee and jumps to it.

    On Mach-O (Darwin) systems, -mlongcall directs the compiler emit to the glue for every direct call, and the Darwin linker decides whether to use or discard it. -mlong-branch is a synonym for -mlongcall.

    In the future, we may cause GCC to ignore all longcall specifications when the linker is known to generate glue.

-pthread
    Adds support for multithreading with the pthreads library. This option sets flags for both the preprocessor and linker.

-mms-bitfields
    Set the default structure layout to be compatible with the Microsoft compiler standard. This is equivalent to adding an "ms_struct" attribute to each structure and union tag definition. The default is mno-ms-bitfields.

  Options for Code Generation Conventions
These machine-independent options control the interface conventions used in code generation.

Most of them have both positive and negative forms; the negative form of -ffoo would be -fno-foo. In the table below, only one of the forms is listed---the one which is not the default. You can figure out the other form by either removing no- or adding it.

-fbounds-check
    For front-ends that support it, generate additional code to check that indices used to access arrays are within the declared range. This is currently only supported by the Java and Fortran front-ends, where this option defaults to true and false respectively.

-fwrapv
    This option instructs the compiler to assume that signed arithmetic overflow of addition, subtraction and multiplication wraps around using twos-complement representation. This flag enables some optimizations and disables others. This option is enabled by default for the Java front-end, as required by the Java language specification.

-fexceptions
    Enable exception handling. Generates extra code needed to propagate exceptions. For some targets, this implies GCC will generate frame unwind information for all functions, which can produce significant data size overhead, although it does not affect execution. If you do not specify this option, GCC will enable it by default for languages like C++ which normally require exception handling, and disable it for languages like C that do not normally require it. However, you may need to enable this option when compiling C code that needs to interoperate properly with exception handlers written in C++. You may also wish to disable this option if you are compiling older C++ programs that don't use exception handling.

-fnon-call-exceptions
    Generate code that allows trapping instructions to throw exceptions. Note that this requires platform-specific runtime support that does not exist everywhere. Moreover, it only allows trapping instructions to throw exceptions, i.e. memory references or floating point instructions. It does not allow exceptions to be thrown from arbitrary signal handlers such as "SIGALRM".

-funwind-tables
    Similar to -fexceptions, except that it will just generate any needed static data, but will not affect the generated code in any other way. You will normally not enable this option; instead, a language processor that needs this handling would enable it on your behalf.

-fasynchronous-unwind-tables
    Generate unwind table in dwarf2 format, if supported by target machine. The table is exact at each instruction boundary, so it can be used for stack unwinding from asynchronous events (such as debugger or garbage collector).

-fpcc-struct-return
    Return "short" "struct" and "union" values in memory like longer ones, rather than in registers. This convention is less efficient, but it has the advantage of allowing intercallability between GCC-compiled files and files compiled with other compilers, particularly the Portable C Compiler (pcc).

    The precise convention for returning structures in memory depends on the target configuration macros.

    Short structures and unions are those whose size and alignment match that of some integer type.

    Warning: code compiled with the -fpcc-struct-return switch is not binary compatible with code compiled with the -freg-struct-return switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-freg-struct-return
    Return "struct" and "union" values in registers when possible. This is more efficient for small structures than -fpcc-struct-return.

    If you specify neither -fpcc-struct-return nor -freg-struct-return, GCC defaults to whichever convention is standard for the target. If there is no standard convention, GCC defaults to -fpcc-struct-return, except on targets where GCC is the principal compiler. In those cases, we can choose the standard, and we chose the more efficient register return alternative.

    Warning: code compiled with the -freg-struct-return switch is not binary compatible with code compiled with the -fpcc-struct-return switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-fshort-enums
    Allocate to an "enum" type only as many bytes as it needs for the declared range of possible values. Specifically, the "enum" type will be equivalent to the smallest integer type which has enough room.

    Warning: the -fshort-enums switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-fshort-double
    Use the same size for "double" as for "float".

    Warning: the -fshort-double switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-fshort-wchar
    Override the underlying type for wchar_t to be short unsigned int instead of the default for the target. This option is useful for building programs to run under WINE.

    Warning: the -fshort-wchar switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-fno-common
    In C, allocate even uninitialized global variables in the data section of the object file, rather than generating them as common blocks. This has the effect that if the same variable is declared (without "extern") in two different compilations, you will get an error when you link them. The only reason this might be useful is if you wish to verify that the program will work on other systems which always work this way.

-fno-ident
    Ignore the #ident directive.

-finhibit-size-directive
    Don't output a ".size" assembler directive, or anything else that would cause trouble if the function is split in the middle, and the two halves are placed at locations far apart in memory. This option is used when compiling crtstuff.c; you should not need to use it for anything else.

-fverbose-asm
    Put extra commentary information in the generated assembly code to make it more readable. This option is generally only of use to those who actually need to read the generated assembly code (perhaps while debugging the compiler itself).

    -fno-verbose-asm, the default, causes the extra information to be omitted and is useful when comparing two assembler files.

-fpic
    Generate position-independent code (PIC) suitable for use in a shared library, if supported for the target machine. Such code accesses all constant addresses through a global offset table (GOT). The dynamic loader resolves the GOT entries when the program starts (the dynamic loader is not part of GCC; it is part of the operating system). If the GOT size for the linked executable exceeds a machine-specific maximum size, you get an error message from the linker indicating that -fpic does not work; in that case, recompile with -fPIC instead. (These maximums are 8k on the SPARC and 32k on the m68k and RS/6000. The 386 has no such limit.)

    Position-independent code requires special support, and therefore works only on certain machines. For the 386, GCC supports PIC for System V but not for the Sun 386i. Code generated for the IBM RS/6000 is always position-independent.

    When this flag is set, the macros "__pic__" and "__PIC__" are defined to 1.

-fPIC
    If supported for the target machine, emit position-independent code, suitable for dynamic linking and avoiding any limit on the size of the global offset table. This option makes a difference on the m68k, PowerPC and SPARC.

    Position-independent code requires special support, and therefore works only on certain machines.

    When this flag is set, the macros "__pic__" and "__PIC__" are defined to 2.

    -fPIC is the default on Darwin and Mac OS X.

-fpie
-fPIE
    These options are similar to -fpic and -fPIC, but generated position independent code can be only linked into executables. Usually these options are used when -pie GCC option will be used during linking.

-fno-jump-tables
    Do not use jump tables for switch statements even where it would be more efficient than other code generation strategies. This option is of use in conjunction with -fpic or -fPIC for building code which forms part of a dynamic linker and cannot reference the address of a jump table. On some targets, jump tables do not require a GOT and this option is not needed.

-ffixed-reg
    Treat the register named reg as a fixed register; generated code should never refer to it (except perhaps as a stack pointer, frame pointer or in some other fixed role).

    reg must be the name of a register. The register names accepted are machine-specific and are defined in the "REGISTER_NAMES" macro in the machine description macro file.

    This flag does not have a negative form, because it specifies a three-way choice.

-fcall-used-reg
    Treat the register named reg as an allocable register that is clobbered by function calls. It may be allocated for temporaries or variables that do not live across a call. Functions compiled this way will not save and restore the register reg.

    It is an error to used this flag with the frame pointer or stack pointer. Use of this flag for other registers that have fixed pervasive roles in the machine's execution model will produce disastrous results.

    This flag does not have a negative form, because it specifies a three-way choice.

-fcall-saved-reg
    Treat the register named reg as an allocable register saved by functions. It may be allocated even for temporaries or variables that live across a call. Functions compiled this way will save and restore the register reg if they use it.

    It is an error to used this flag with the frame pointer or stack pointer. Use of this flag for other registers that have fixed pervasive roles in the machine's execution model will produce disastrous results.

    A different sort of disaster will result from the use of this flag for a register in which function values may be returned.

    This flag does not have a negative form, because it specifies a three-way choice.

-fpack-struct[=n]
    Without a value specified, pack all structure members together without holes. When a value is specified (which must be a small power of two), pack structure members according to this value, representing the maximum alignment (that is, objects with default alignment requirements larger than this will be output potentially unaligned at the next fitting location.

    Warning: the -fpack-struct switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Additionally, it makes the code suboptimal. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface.

-finstrument-functions
    Generate instrumentation calls for entry and exit to functions. Just after function entry and just before function exit, the following profiling functions will be called with the address of the current function and its call site. (On some platforms, "__builtin_return_address" does not work beyond the current function, so the call site information may not be available to the profiling functions otherwise.)

            void __cyg_profile_func_enter (void *this_fn,
                                           void *call_site);
            void __cyg_profile_func_exit  (void *this_fn,
                                           void *call_site);

    The first argument is the address of the start of the current function, which may be looked up exactly in the symbol table.

    This instrumentation is also done for functions expanded inline in other functions. The profiling calls will indicate where, conceptually, the inline function is entered and exited. This means that addressable versions of such functions must be available. If all your uses of a function are expanded inline, this may mean an additional expansion of code size. If you use extern inline in your C code, an addressable version of such functions must be provided. (This is normally the case anyways, but if you get lucky and the optimizer always expands the functions inline, you might have gotten away without providing static copies.)

    A function may be given the attribute "no_instrument_function", in which case this instrumentation will not be done. This can be used, for example, for the profiling functions listed above, high-priority interrupt routines, and any functions from which the profiling functions cannot safely be called (perhaps signal handlers, if the profiling routines generate output or allocate memory).

-fstack-check
    Generate code to verify that you do not go beyond the boundary of the stack. You should specify this flag if you are running in an environment with multiple threads, but only rarely need to specify it in a single-threaded environment since stack overflow is automatically detected on nearly all systems if there is only one stack.

    Note that this switch does not actually cause checking to be done; the operating system must do that. The switch causes generation of code to ensure that the operating system sees the stack being extended.

-fstack-limit-register=reg
-fstack-limit-symbol=sym
-fno-stack-limit
    Generate code to ensure that the stack does not grow beyond a certain value, either the value of a register or the address of a symbol. If the stack would grow beyond the value, a signal is raised. For most targets, the signal is raised before the stack overruns the boundary, so it is possible to catch the signal without taking special precautions.

    For instance, if the stack starts at absolute address 0x80000000 and grows downwards, you can use the flags -fstack-limit-symbol=__stack_limit and -Wl,--defsym,__stack_limit=0x7ffe0000 to enforce a stack limit of 128KB. Note that this may only work with the GNU linker.

-fargument-alias
-fargument-noalias
-fargument-noalias-global
-fargument-noalias-anything
    Specify the possible relationships among parameters and between parameters and global data.

    -fargument-alias specifies that arguments (parameters) may alias each other and may alias global storage.-fargument-noalias specifies that arguments do not alias each other, but may alias global storage.-fargument-noalias-global specifies that arguments do not alias each other and do not alias global storage. -fargument-noalias-anything specifies that arguments do not alias any other storage.

    Each language will automatically use whatever option is required by the language standard. You should not need to use these options yourself.

-fleading-underscore
    This option and its counterpart, -fno-leading-underscore, forcibly change the way C symbols are represented in the object file. One use is to help link with legacy assembly code.

    Warning: the -fleading-underscore switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without that switch. Use it to conform to a non-default application binary interface. Not all targets provide complete support for this switch.

-ftls-model=model
    Alter the thread-local storage model to be used. The model argument should be one of "global-dynamic", "local-dynamic", "initial-exec" or "local-exec".

    The default without -fpic is "initial-exec"; with -fpic the default is "global-dynamic".

-fvisibility=default|internal|hidden|protected
    Set the default ELF image symbol visibility to the specified option---all symbols will be marked with this unless overridden within the code. Using this feature can very substantially improve linking and load times of shared object libraries, produce more optimized code, provide near-perfect API export and prevent symbol clashes. It is strongly recommended that you use this in any shared objects you distribute.

    Despite the nomenclature, "default" always means public ie; available to be linked against from outside the shared object. "protected" and "internal" are pretty useless in real-world usage so the only other commonly used option will be "hidden". The default if -fvisibility isn't specified is "default", i.e., make every symbol public---this causes the same behavior as previous versions of GCC.

    A good explanation of the benefits offered by ensuring ELF symbols have the correct visibility is given by "How To Write Shared Libraries" by Ulrich Drepper (which can be found at <http://people.redhat.com/~drepper/>)---however a superior solution made possible by this option to marking things hidden when the default is public is to make the default hidden and mark things public. This is the norm with DLL's on Windows and with -fvisibility=hidden and "__attribute__ ((visibility("default")))" instead of "__declspec(dllexport)" you get almost identical semantics with identical syntax. This is a great boon to those working with cross-platform projects.

    For those adding visibility support to existing code, you may find #pragma GCC visibility of use. This works by you enclosing the declarations you wish to set visibility for with (for example) #pragma GCC visibility push(hidden) and #pragma GCC visibility pop. Bear in mind that symbol visibility should be viewed as part of the API interface contract and thus all new code should always specify visibility when it is not the default ie; declarations only for use within the local DSO should always be marked explicitly as hidden as so to avoid PLT indirection overheads---making this abundantly clear also aids readability and self-documentation of the code. Note that due to ISO C++ specification requirements, operator new and operator delete must always be of default visibility.

    Be aware that headers from outside your project, in particular system headers and headers from any other library you use, may not be expecting to be compiled with visibility other than the default. You may need to explicitly say #pragma GCC visibility push(default) before including any such headers.

    extern declarations are not affected by -fvisibility, so a lot of code can be recompiled with -fvisibility=hidden with no modifications. However, this means that calls to extern functions with no explicit visibility will use the PLT, so it is more effective to use __attribute ((visibility)) and/or #pragma GCC visibility to tell the compiler which extern declarations should be treated as hidden.

    Note that -fvisibility does affect C++ vague linkage entities. This means that, for instance, an exception class that will be thrown between DSOs must be explicitly marked with default visibility so that the type_info nodes will be unified between the DSOs.

    An overview of these techniques, their benefits and how to use them is at <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility>.

ENVIRONMENT
This section describes several environment variables that affect how GCC operates. Some of them work by specifying directories or prefixes to use when searching for various kinds of files. Some are used to specify other aspects of the compilation environment.

Note that you can also specify places to search using options such as -B, -I and -L. These take precedence over places specified using environment variables, which in turn take precedence over those specified by the configuration of GCC.

LANG
LC_CTYPE
LC_MESSAGES
LC_ALL
    These environment variables control the way that GCC uses localization information that allow GCC to work with different national conventions. GCC inspects the locale categories LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES if it has been configured to do so. These locale categories can be set to any value supported by your installation. A typical value is en_GB.UTF-8 for English in the United Kingdom encoded in UTF-8.

    The LC_CTYPE environment variable specifies character classification. GCC uses it to determine the character boundaries in a string; this is needed for some multibyte encodings that contain quote and escape characters that would otherwise be interpreted as a string end or escape.

    The LC_MESSAGES environment variable specifies the language to use in diagnostic messages.

    If the LC_ALL environment variable is set, it overrides the value of LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES; otherwise, LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES default to the value of the LANG environment variable. If none of these variables are set, GCC defaults to traditional C English behavior.

TMPDIR
    If TMPDIR is set, it specifies the directory to use for temporary files. GCC uses temporary files to hold the output of one stage of compilation which is to be used as input to the next stage: for example, the output of the preprocessor, which is the input to the compiler proper.

GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
    If GCC_EXEC_PREFIX is set, it specifies a prefix to use in the names of the subprograms executed by the compiler. No slash is added when this prefix is combined with the name of a subprogram, but you can specify a prefix that ends with a slash if you wish.

    If GCC_EXEC_PREFIX is not set, GCC will attempt to figure out an appropriate prefix to use based on the pathname it was invoked with.

    If GCC cannot find the subprogram using the specified prefix, it tries looking in the usual places for the subprogram.

    The default value of GCC_EXEC_PREFIX is prefix/lib/gcc/ where prefix is the value of "prefix" when you ran the configure script.

    Other prefixes specified with -B take precedence over this prefix.

    This prefix is also used for finding files such as crt0.o that are used for linking.

    In addition, the prefix is used in an unusual way in finding the directories to search for header files. For each of the standard directories whose name normally begins with /usr/local/lib/gcc (more precisely, with the value of GCC_INCLUDE_DIR), GCC tries replacing that beginning with the specified prefix to produce an alternate directory name. Thus, with -Bfoo/, GCC will search foo/bar where it would normally search /usr/local/lib/bar. These alternate directories are searched first; the standard directories come next.

COMPILER_PATH
    The value of COMPILER_PATH is a colon-separated list of directories, much like PATH. GCC tries the directories thus specified when searching for subprograms, if it can't find the subprograms using GCC_EXEC_PREFIX.

LIBRARY_PATH
    The value of LIBRARY_PATH is a colon-separated list of directories, much like PATH. When configured as a native compiler, GCC tries the directories thus specified when searching for special linker files, if it can't find them using GCC_EXEC_PREFIX. Linking using GCC also uses these directories when searching for ordinary libraries for the -l option (but directories specified with -L come first).

LANG
    This variable is used to pass locale information to the compiler. One way in which this information is used is to determine the character set to be used when character literals, string literals and comments are parsed in C and C++. When the compiler is configured to allow multibyte characters, the following values for LANG are recognized:

    C-JIS
        Recognize JIS characters.

    C-SJIS
        Recognize SJIS characters.

    C-EUCJP
        Recognize EUCJP characters.

    If LANG is not defined, or if it has some other value, then the compiler will use mblen and mbtowc as defined by the default locale to recognize and translate multibyte characters.

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET
IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET
    These variables are used to set the target OS version, as described for command-line options -mmacosx-version-min and -miphoneos-version-min. Only one OS version can be specified per architecture, with MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET taking precedence on non-ARM targets and IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET taking precedence on ARM targets.

    If either command-line option -mmacosx-version-min or -miphoneos-version-min is specified, both of these environment variables are ignored.

Some additional environments variables affect the behavior of the preprocessor.

CPATH
C_INCLUDE_PATH
CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH
OBJC_INCLUDE_PATH
    Each variable's value is a list of directories separated by a special character, much like PATH, in which to look for header files. The special character, "PATH_SEPARATOR", is target-dependent and determined at GCC build time. For Microsoft Windows-based targets it is a semicolon, and for almost all other targets it is a colon.

    CPATH specifies a list of directories to be searched as if specified with -I, but after any paths given with -I options on the command line. This environment variable is used regardless of which language is being preprocessed.

    The remaining environment variables apply only when preprocessing the particular language indicated. Each specifies a list of directories to be searched as if specified with -isystem, but after any paths given with -isystem options on the command line.

    In all these variables, an empty element instructs the compiler to search its current working directory. Empty elements can appear at the beginning or end of a path. For instance, if the value of CPATH is ":/special/include", that has the same effect as -I. -I/special/include.

DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT
    If this variable is set, its value specifies how to output dependencies for Make based on the non-system header files processed by the compiler. System header files are ignored in the dependency output.

    The value of DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT can be just a file name, in which case the Make rules are written to that file, guessing the target name from the source file name. Or the value can have the form file target, in which case the rules are written to file file using target as the target name.

    In other words, this environment variable is equivalent to combining the options -MM and -MF, with an optional -MT switch too.

SUNPRO_DEPENDENCIES
    This variable is the same as DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT (see above), except that system header files are not ignored, so it implies -M rather than -MM. However, the dependence on the main input file is omitted.

BUGS
To report bugs to Apple, see <http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter>.

FOOTNOTES

1.  On some systems, gcc -shared needs to build supplementary stub code for constructors to work. On multi-libbed systems, gcc -shared must select the correct support libraries to link against. Failing to supply the correct flags may lead to subtle defects. Supplying them in cases where they are not necessary is innocuous.

SEE ALSO
gpl(7), gfdl(7), fsf-funding(7), cpp(1), gcov(1), as(1), ld(1), gdb(1), adb(1), dbx(1), sdb(1) and the Info entries for gcc, cpp, as, ld, binutils and gdb.

AUTHOR
See the Info entry for gcc, or <http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Contributors.html>, for contributors to GCC.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1988, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being "GNU General Public License" and "Funding Free Software", the Front-Cover texts being (a) (see below), and with the Back-Cover Texts being (b) (see below). A copy of the license is included in the gfdl(7) man page.

(a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is:

     A GNU Manual

(b) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is:

     You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU
     software.  Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise
     funds for GNU development.