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| 1 | −Tiny C Compiler - Make the best x86 Linux C compiler in less than 8192 bytes. | |
| 2 | −----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1 | +Tiny C Compiler - C Scripting Everywhere - The Smallest ANSI C compiler | |
| 2 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 3 | 3 | |
| 4 | −Differences with ANSI C: | |
| 5 | −----------------------- | |
| 4 | +Features: | |
| 5 | +-------- | |
| 6 | 6 | |
| 7 | −- Preprocessor: only '#define xx yy' is supported. Recursive defined | |
| 8 | − supported. All other directives are not supported. | |
| 7 | +- SMALL! You can compile and execute C code everywhere, for example on | |
| 8 | + rescue disks. | |
| 9 | 9 | |
| 10 | −- Types: int, char, void, pointers and functions are | |
| 11 | − supported. Function pointers are also supported. struct, union and | |
| 12 | − typedef not supported. | |
| 10 | +- FAST! tcc generates optimized x86 code. No byte code overhead. | |
| 13 | 11 | |
| 14 | −- Operations: 'x=' not supported. | |
| 12 | +- UNLIMITED! Any C dynamic library can be used directly. TCC is | |
| 13 | + heading torwards full ANSI C compliance. TCC can of course compile | |
| 14 | + itself. | |
| 15 | 15 | |
| 16 | −- Keywords: the following keywords are supported: int void char if | |
| 17 | − else while break return for. | |
| 16 | +- Compile and execute C source directly. No linking or assembly | |
| 17 | + necessary. Full C preprocessor included. | |
| 18 | 18 | |
| 19 | −- Symbol scope: local variables supported, but they cannot have the | |
| 20 | − same name as global variables. | |
| 19 | +- C script supported : just add '#!/usr/local/bin/tcc' at the first | |
| 20 | + line of your C source, and execute it directly from the command line ! | |
| 21 | 21 | |
| 22 | −Features: | |
| 23 | −-------- | |
| 22 | +- For adventurers, tcc is conceived to be able to generate code for | |
| 23 | + other targets. | |
| 24 | 24 | |
| 25 | −- SMALL! You can compile and execute C code everywhere, for example on | |
| 26 | − rescue disks. | |
| 25 | +Documentation: | |
| 26 | +------------- | |
| 27 | + | |
| 28 | +1) Installation | |
| 29 | + | |
| 30 | +***TCC currently only work on Linux x86***. | |
| 31 | + | |
| 32 | +Type 'make install' to compile and install tcc in /usr/local and | |
| 33 | +/usr/local/lib/tcc. | |
| 34 | + | |
| 35 | +2) Introduction | |
| 36 | + | |
| 37 | +We assume here that you know ANSI C. Look at the example ex1.c to know | |
| 38 | +what the programs look like. | |
| 39 | + | |
| 40 | +The main limitations of tcc are that you cannot use floats. | |
| 41 | + | |
| 42 | +The include file <tcclib.h> can be used if you want a small basic libc | |
| 43 | +include support (especially useful for floppy disks). Of course, you | |
| 44 | +can also use standard headers, although they are slower to compile. | |
| 45 | + | |
| 46 | +You can begin your C script with '#!/usr/local/bin/tcc' on the first | |
| 47 | +line and set its execute bits (chmod a+x your_script). Then, you can | |
| 48 | +launch the C code as a shell or perl script :-) The command line | |
| 49 | +arguments are put in 'argc' and 'argv' of the main functions, as in | |
| 50 | +ANSI C. | |
| 51 | + | |
| 52 | +3) Invokation | |
| 53 | + | |
| 54 | +'-Idir' : specify an additionnal include path. The | |
| 55 | +default ones are: /usr/include, /usr/lib/tcc, /usr/local/lib/tcc. | |
| 56 | + | |
| 57 | +'-Dsym' : define preprocessor symbol 'sym' to 1. | |
| 58 | + | |
| 59 | +'-lxxx' : dynamically link your program with library | |
| 60 | +libxxx.so. Standard library paths are checked, including those | |
| 61 | +specificed with LD_LIBRARY_PATH. | |
| 62 | + | |
| 63 | +Only one source code can be compiled. If you have multiple source | |
| 64 | +files, add one which includes all your sources. | |
| 65 | + | |
| 66 | +4) Examples | |
| 67 | + | |
| 68 | +ex1.c: simplest example (hello world). Can also be launched directly | |
| 69 | +as a script: ./ex2.c. | |
| 70 | + | |
| 71 | +ex2.c: more complicated example: find a number with the four | |
| 72 | +operations given a list of numbers (benchmark). | |
| 73 | + | |
| 74 | +ex3.c: compute fibonacci numbers (benchmark). | |
| 75 | + | |
| 76 | +ex4.c: more complicated: X11 program. Very complicated test in fact | |
| 77 | +because standard headers are being used ! Currently slow because | |
| 78 | +parsing does not use hash tables. | |
| 79 | + | |
| 80 | +ex5.c: 'hello world' with standard glibc headers. | |
| 81 | + | |
| 82 | +tcc.c: TCC can compile itself. Used to check the code generator. | |
| 83 | + | |
| 84 | +prog.c: auto test for TCC which tests many subtle possible bugs. Used | |
| 85 | +when doing 'make test'. | |
| 86 | + | |
| 87 | +Exact differences with ANSI C: | |
| 88 | +----------------------------- | |
| 89 | + | |
| 90 | +1) Preprocessor | |
| 91 | + | |
| 92 | + - the preprocessor tokens are the same as C. It means that in some | |
| 93 | + rare cases, preprocessed numbers are not handled exactly as in ANSI | |
| 94 | + C. This approach has the advantage of being simpler and FAST! | |
| 95 | + | |
| 96 | + - __LINE__, __FILE__, __DATE__, __TIME__ are currently not handled. | |
| 97 | + | |
| 98 | + - #line not handled | |
| 99 | + | |
| 100 | +2) C language | |
| 101 | + | |
| 102 | +- Parsing: variables cannot be initialized ('int a = 1' or 'int tab[2] = | |
| 103 | + {1, 2}' not supported). | |
| 104 | + | |
| 105 | +- Cannot pass struct/union as value. Cannot assign struct/union (use | |
| 106 | + memcpy instead). | |
| 27 | 107 | |
| 28 | −- FAST! tcc generate x86 code. No byte code overhead. | |
| 108 | +- Types: floating point numbers are not supported. | |
| 29 | 109 | |
| 30 | −- Compile and execute C source directly. No linking necessary. | |
| 110 | +- (BUG) 'char' and 'short' casts do not truncate correctly. | |
| 31 | 111 | |
| 32 | −- C script supported : just add '#!/usr/bin/tcc' at the first line of | |
| 33 | − your C source, and execute it directly from the command line ! | |
| 112 | +- 'sizeof' may not work if too complex expression is given. | |
| 34 | 113 | |
| 35 | −- All C library functions can be used via dynamic linking. | |
| 114 | +Supported C extensions: | |
| 115 | +---------------------- | |
| 36 | 116 | |
| 37 | −------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 38 | −An even smaller compiler can be build from tcc by activating the | |
| 39 | −define 'TINY'. The following changes from tcc: | |
| 117 | +- 'inline' keyword is ignored. | |
| 40 | 118 | |
| 41 | −- Comments are not supported. | |
| 42 | 119 | |
| 43 | −- Parsing: No char constants. No '\r' and '\t' in strings. Only base | |
| 44 | − 10 numbers are supported. | |
| 120 | +License: | |
| 121 | +------- | |
| 45 | 122 | |
| 46 | −- no 'for' loops. | |
| 123 | +TCC is distributed under the GNU Generic Public License (see COPYING | |
| 124 | +file). | |
| 47 | 125 | |
| 48 | −- Operations: '?:', ',', 'x=', shifts, '&&', '||', '!', '~' not supported. | |
| 126 | +I accept only patches where you give your copyright explictely to me | |
| 127 | +to simplify licensing issues. | |
| 49 | 128 | |
| 129 | +Fabrice Bellard - Nov 11, 2001. | |