Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) This file documents the use of the GNU compilers. Copyright © 1988-2019 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 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being “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 section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”. (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. Short Table of Contents * 1 Programming Languages Supported by GCC * 2 Language Standards Supported by GCC * 3 GCC Command Options * 4 C Implementation-Defined Behavior * 5 C++ Implementation-Defined Behavior * 6 Extensions to the C Language Family * 7 Extensions to the C++ Language * 8 GNU Objective-C Features * 9 Binary Compatibility * 10 gcov—a Test Coverage Program * 11 gcov-tool—an Offline Gcda Profile Processing Tool * 12 gcov-dump—an Offline Gcda and Gcno Profile Dump Tool * 13 Known Causes of Trouble with GCC * 14 Reporting Bugs * 15 How To Get Help with GCC * 16 Contributing to GCC Development * Funding Free Software * The GNU Project and GNU/Linux * GNU General Public License * GNU Free Documentation License * Contributors to GCC * Option Index * Keyword Index Table of Contents * 1 Programming Languages Supported by GCC * 2 Language Standards Supported by GCC * 2.1 C Language * 2.2 C++ Language * 2.3 Objective-C and Objective-C++ Languages * 2.4 Go Language * 2.5 HSA Intermediate Language (HSAIL) * 2.6 D language * 2.7 References for Other Languages * 3 GCC Command Options * 3.1 Option Summary * 3.2 Options Controlling the Kind of Output * 3.3 Compiling C++ Programs * 3.4 Options Controlling C Dialect * 3.5 Options Controlling C++ Dialect * 3.6 Options Controlling Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialects * 3.7 Options to Control Diagnostic Messages Formatting * 3.8 Options to Request or Suppress Warnings * 3.9 Options for Debugging Your Program * 3.10 Options That Control Optimization * 3.11 Program Instrumentation Options * 3.12 Options Controlling the Preprocessor * 3.13 Passing Options to the Assembler * 3.14 Options for Linking * 3.15 Options for Directory Search * 3.16 Options for Code Generation Conventions * 3.17 GCC Developer Options * 3.18 Machine-Dependent Options * 3.18.1 AArch64 Options * 3.18.1.1 -march and -mcpu Feature Modifiers * 3.18.2 Adapteva Epiphany Options * 3.18.3 AMD GCN Options * 3.18.4 ARC Options * 3.18.5 ARM Options * 3.18.6 AVR Options * 3.18.6.1 EIND and Devices with More Than 128 Ki Bytes of Flash * 3.18.6.2 Handling of the RAMPD, RAMPX, RAMPY and RAMPZ Special Function Registers * 3.18.6.3 AVR Built-in Macros * 3.18.7 Blackfin Options * 3.18.8 C6X Options * 3.18.9 CRIS Options * 3.18.10 CR16 Options * 3.18.11 C-SKY Options * 3.18.12 Darwin Options * 3.18.13 DEC Alpha Options * 3.18.14 FR30 Options * 3.18.15 FT32 Options * 3.18.16 FRV Options * 3.18.17 GNU/Linux Options * 3.18.18 H8/300 Options * 3.18.19 HPPA Options * 3.18.20 IA-64 Options * 3.18.21 LM32 Options * 3.18.22 M32C Options * 3.18.23 M32R/D Options * 3.18.24 M680x0 Options * 3.18.25 MCore Options * 3.18.26 MeP Options * 3.18.27 MicroBlaze Options * 3.18.28 MIPS Options * 3.18.29 MMIX Options * 3.18.30 MN10300 Options * 3.18.31 Moxie Options * 3.18.32 MSP430 Options * 3.18.33 NDS32 Options * 3.18.34 Nios II Options * 3.18.35 Nvidia PTX Options * 3.18.36 OpenRISC Options * 3.18.37 PDP-11 Options * 3.18.38 picoChip Options * 3.18.39 PowerPC Options * 3.18.40 RISC-V Options * 3.18.41 RL78 Options * 3.18.42 IBM RS/6000 and PowerPC Options * 3.18.43 RX Options * 3.18.44 S/390 and zSeries Options * 3.18.45 Score Options * 3.18.46 SH Options * 3.18.47 Solaris 2 Options * 3.18.48 SPARC Options * 3.18.49 SPU Options * 3.18.50 Options for System V * 3.18.51 TILE-Gx Options * 3.18.52 TILEPro Options * 3.18.53 V850 Options * 3.18.54 VAX Options * 3.18.55 Visium Options * 3.18.56 VMS Options * 3.18.57 VxWorks Options * 3.18.58 x86 Options * 3.18.59 x86 Windows Options * 3.18.60 Xstormy16 Options * 3.18.61 Xtensa Options * 3.18.62 zSeries Options * 3.19 Specifying Subprocesses and the Switches to Pass to Them * 3.20 Environment Variables Affecting GCC * 3.21 Using Precompiled Headers * 4 C Implementation-Defined Behavior * 4.1 Translation * 4.2 Environment * 4.3 Identifiers * 4.4 Characters * 4.5 Integers * 4.6 Floating Point * 4.7 Arrays and Pointers * 4.8 Hints * 4.9 Structures, Unions, Enumerations, and Bit-Fields * 4.10 Qualifiers * 4.11 Declarators * 4.12 Statements * 4.13 Preprocessing Directives * 4.14 Library Functions * 4.15 Architecture * 4.16 Locale-Specific Behavior * 5 C++ Implementation-Defined Behavior * 5.1 Conditionally-Supported Behavior * 5.2 Exception Handling * 6 Extensions to the C Language Family * 6.1 Statements and Declarations in Expressions * 6.2 Locally Declared Labels * 6.3 Labels as Values * 6.4 Nested Functions * 6.5 Nonlocal Gotos * 6.6 Constructing Function Calls * 6.7 Referring to a Type with typeof * 6.8 Conditionals with Omitted Operands * 6.9 128-bit Integers * 6.10 Double-Word Integers * 6.11 Complex Numbers * 6.12 Additional Floating Types * 6.13 Half-Precision Floating Point * 6.14 Decimal Floating Types * 6.15 Hex Floats * 6.16 Fixed-Point Types * 6.17 Named Address Spaces * 6.17.1 AVR Named Address Spaces * 6.17.2 M32C Named Address Spaces * 6.17.3 RL78 Named Address Spaces * 6.17.4 SPU Named Address Spaces * 6.17.5 x86 Named Address Spaces * 6.18 Arrays of Length Zero * 6.19 Structures with No Members * 6.20 Arrays of Variable Length * 6.21 Macros with a Variable Number of Arguments. * 6.22 Slightly Looser Rules for Escaped Newlines * 6.23 Non-Lvalue Arrays May Have Subscripts * 6.24 Arithmetic on void- and Function-Pointers * 6.25 Pointer Arguments in Variadic Functions * 6.26 Pointers to Arrays with Qualifiers Work as Expected * 6.27 Non-Constant Initializers * 6.28 Compound Literals * 6.29 Designated Initializers * 6.30 Case Ranges * 6.31 Cast to a Union Type * 6.32 Mixed Declarations and Code * 6.33 Declaring Attributes of Functions * 6.33.1 Common Function Attributes * 6.33.2 AArch64 Function Attributes * 6.33.2.1 Inlining rules * 6.33.3 AMD GCN Function Attributes * 6.33.4 ARC Function Attributes * 6.33.5 ARM Function Attributes * 6.33.6 AVR Function Attributes * 6.33.7 Blackfin Function Attributes * 6.33.8 CR16 Function Attributes * 6.33.9 C-SKY Function Attributes * 6.33.10 Epiphany Function Attributes * 6.33.11 H8/300 Function Attributes * 6.33.12 IA-64 Function Attributes * 6.33.13 M32C Function Attributes * 6.33.14 M32R/D Function Attributes * 6.33.15 m68k Function Attributes * 6.33.16 MCORE Function Attributes * 6.33.17 MeP Function Attributes * 6.33.18 MicroBlaze Function Attributes * 6.33.19 Microsoft Windows Function Attributes * 6.33.20 MIPS Function Attributes * 6.33.21 MSP430 Function Attributes * 6.33.22 NDS32 Function Attributes * 6.33.23 Nios II Function Attributes * 6.33.24 Nvidia PTX Function Attributes * 6.33.25 PowerPC Function Attributes * 6.33.26 RISC-V Function Attributes * 6.33.27 RL78 Function Attributes * 6.33.28 RX Function Attributes * 6.33.29 S/390 Function Attributes * 6.33.30 SH Function Attributes * 6.33.31 SPU Function Attributes * 6.33.32 Symbian OS Function Attributes * 6.33.33 V850 Function Attributes * 6.33.34 Visium Function Attributes * 6.33.35 x86 Function Attributes * 6.33.36 Xstormy16 Function Attributes * 6.34 Specifying Attributes of Variables * 6.34.1 Common Variable Attributes * 6.34.2 ARC Variable Attributes * 6.34.3 AVR Variable Attributes * 6.34.4 Blackfin Variable Attributes * 6.34.5 H8/300 Variable Attributes * 6.34.6 IA-64 Variable Attributes * 6.34.7 M32R/D Variable Attributes * 6.34.8 MeP Variable Attributes * 6.34.9 Microsoft Windows Variable Attributes * 6.34.10 MSP430 Variable Attributes * 6.34.11 Nvidia PTX Variable Attributes * 6.34.12 PowerPC Variable Attributes * 6.34.13 RL78 Variable Attributes * 6.34.14 SPU Variable Attributes * 6.34.15 V850 Variable Attributes * 6.34.16 x86 Variable Attributes * 6.34.17 Xstormy16 Variable Attributes * 6.35 Specifying Attributes of Types * 6.35.1 Common Type Attributes * 6.35.2 ARC Type Attributes * 6.35.3 ARM Type Attributes * 6.35.4 MeP Type Attributes * 6.35.5 PowerPC Type Attributes * 6.35.6 SPU Type Attributes * 6.35.7 x86 Type Attributes * 6.36 Label Attributes * 6.37 Enumerator Attributes * 6.38 Statement Attributes * 6.39 Attribute Syntax * 6.40 Prototypes and Old-Style Function Definitions * 6.41 C++ Style Comments * 6.42 Dollar Signs in Identifier Names * 6.43 The Character ESC in Constants * 6.44 Determining the Alignment of Functions, Types or Variables * 6.45 An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro * 6.46 When is a Volatile Object Accessed? * 6.47 How to Use Inline Assembly Language in C Code * 6.47.1 Basic Asm — Assembler Instructions Without Operands * 6.47.2 Extended Asm - Assembler Instructions with C Expression Operands * 6.47.2.1 Volatile * 6.47.2.2 Assembler Template * 6.47.2.3 Output Operands * 6.47.2.4 Flag Output Operands * 6.47.2.5 Input Operands * 6.47.2.6 Clobbers and Scratch Registers * 6.47.2.7 Goto Labels * 6.47.2.8 x86 Operand Modifiers * 6.47.2.9 x86 Floating-Point asm Operands * 6.47.3 Constraints for asm Operands * 6.47.3.1 Simple Constraints * 6.47.3.2 Multiple Alternative Constraints * 6.47.3.3 Constraint Modifier Characters * 6.47.3.4 Constraints for Particular Machines * 6.47.4 Controlling Names Used in Assembler Code * 6.47.5 Variables in Specified Registers * 6.47.5.1 Defining Global Register Variables * 6.47.5.2 Specifying Registers for Local Variables * 6.47.6 Size of an asm * 6.48 Alternate Keywords * 6.49 Incomplete enum Types * 6.50 Function Names as Strings * 6.51 Getting the Return or Frame Address of a Function * 6.52 Using Vector Instructions through Built-in Functions * 6.53 Support for offsetof * 6.54 Legacy __sync Built-in Functions for Atomic Memory Access * 6.55 Built-in Functions for Memory Model Aware Atomic Operations * 6.56 Built-in Functions to Perform Arithmetic with Overflow Checking * 6.57 x86-Specific Memory Model Extensions for Transactional Memory * 6.58 Object Size Checking Built-in Functions * 6.59 Other Built-in Functions Provided by GCC * 6.60 Built-in Functions Specific to Particular Target Machines * 6.60.1 AArch64 Built-in Functions * 6.60.2 Alpha Built-in Functions * 6.60.3 Altera Nios II Built-in Functions * 6.60.4 ARC Built-in Functions * 6.60.5 ARC SIMD Built-in Functions * 6.60.6 ARM iWMMXt Built-in Functions * 6.60.7 ARM C Language Extensions (ACLE) * 6.60.8 ARM Floating Point Status and Control Intrinsics * 6.60.9 ARM ARMv8-M Security Extensions * 6.60.10 AVR Built-in Functions * 6.60.11 Blackfin Built-in Functions * 6.60.12 FR-V Built-in Functions * 6.60.12.1 Argument Types * 6.60.12.2 Directly-Mapped Integer Functions * 6.60.12.3 Directly-Mapped Media Functions * 6.60.12.4 Raw Read/Write Functions * 6.60.12.5 Other Built-in Functions * 6.60.13 MIPS DSP Built-in Functions * 6.60.14 MIPS Paired-Single Support * 6.60.15 MIPS Loongson Built-in Functions * 6.60.15.1 Paired-Single Arithmetic * 6.60.15.2 Paired-Single Built-in Functions * 6.60.15.3 MIPS-3D Built-in Functions * 6.60.16 MIPS SIMD Architecture (MSA) Support * 6.60.16.1 MIPS SIMD Architecture Built-in Functions * 6.60.17 Other MIPS Built-in Functions * 6.60.18 MSP430 Built-in Functions * 6.60.19 NDS32 Built-in Functions * 6.60.20 picoChip Built-in Functions * 6.60.21 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions * 6.60.21.1 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions Available on all Configurations * 6.60.21.2 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions Available on ISA 2.05 * 6.60.21.3 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions Available on ISA 2.06 * 6.60.21.4 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions Available on ISA 2.07 * 6.60.21.5 Basic PowerPC Built-in Functions Available on ISA 3.0 * 6.60.22 PowerPC AltiVec/VSX Built-in Functions * 6.60.22.1 PowerPC AltiVec Built-in Functions on ISA 2.05 * 6.60.22.2 PowerPC AltiVec Built-in Functions Available on ISA 2.06 * 6.60.22.3 PowerPC AltiVec Built-in Functions Available on ISA 2.07 * 6.60.22.4 PowerPC AltiVec Built-in Functions Available on ISA 3.0 * 6.60.23 PowerPC Hardware Transactional Memory Built-in Functions * 6.60.23.1 PowerPC HTM Low Level Built-in Functions * 6.60.23.2 PowerPC HTM High Level Inline Functions * 6.60.24 PowerPC Atomic Memory Operation Functions * 6.60.25 RX Built-in Functions * 6.60.26 S/390 System z Built-in Functions * 6.60.27 SH Built-in Functions * 6.60.28 SPARC VIS Built-in Functions * 6.60.29 SPU Built-in Functions * 6.60.30 TI C6X Built-in Functions * 6.60.31 TILE-Gx Built-in Functions * 6.60.32 TILEPro Built-in Functions * 6.60.33 x86 Built-in Functions * 6.60.34 x86 Transactional Memory Intrinsics * 6.60.35 x86 Control-Flow Protection Intrinsics * 6.61 Format Checks Specific to Particular Target Machines * 6.61.1 Solaris Format Checks * 6.61.2 Darwin Format Checks * 6.62 Pragmas Accepted by GCC * 6.62.1 AArch64 Pragmas * 6.62.2 ARM Pragmas * 6.62.3 M32C Pragmas * 6.62.4 MeP Pragmas * 6.62.5 RS/6000 and PowerPC Pragmas * 6.62.6 S/390 Pragmas * 6.62.7 Darwin Pragmas * 6.62.8 Solaris Pragmas * 6.62.9 Symbol-Renaming Pragmas * 6.62.10 Structure-Layout Pragmas * 6.62.11 Weak Pragmas * 6.62.12 Diagnostic Pragmas * 6.62.13 Visibility Pragmas * 6.62.14 Push/Pop Macro Pragmas * 6.62.15 Function Specific Option Pragmas * 6.62.16 Loop-Specific Pragmas * 6.63 Unnamed Structure and Union Fields * 6.64 Thread-Local Storage * 6.64.1 ISO/IEC 9899:1999 Edits for Thread-Local Storage * 6.64.2 ISO/IEC 14882:1998 Edits for Thread-Local Storage * 6.65 Binary Constants using the '0b' Prefix * 7 Extensions to the C++ Language * 7.1 When is a Volatile C++ Object Accessed? * 7.2 Restricting Pointer Aliasing * 7.3 Vague Linkage * 7.4 C++ Interface and Implementation Pragmas * 7.5 Where's the Template? * 7.6 Extracting the Function Pointer from a Bound Pointer to Member Function * 7.7 C++-Specific Variable, Function, and Type Attributes * 7.8 Function Multiversioning * 7.9 Type Traits * 7.10 C++ Concepts * 7.11 Deprecated Features * 7.12 Backwards Compatibility * 8 GNU Objective-C Features * 8.1 GNU Objective-C Runtime API * 8.1.1 Modern GNU Objective-C Runtime API * 8.1.2 Traditional GNU Objective-C Runtime API * 8.2 +load: Executing Code before main * 8.2.1 What You Can and Cannot Do in +load * 8.3 Type Encoding * 8.3.1 Legacy Type Encoding * 8.3.2 @encode * 8.3.3 Method Signatures * 8.4 Garbage Collection * 8.5 Constant String Objects * 8.6 compatibility_alias * 8.7 Exceptions * 8.8 Synchronization * 8.9 Fast Enumeration * 8.9.1 Using Fast Enumeration * 8.9.2 C99-Like Fast Enumeration Syntax * 8.9.3 Fast Enumeration Details * 8.9.4 Fast Enumeration Protocol * 8.10 Messaging with the GNU Objective-C Runtime * 8.10.1 Dynamically Registering Methods * 8.10.2 Forwarding Hook * 9 Binary Compatibility * 10 gcov—a Test Coverage Program * 10.1 Introduction to gcov * 10.2 Invoking gcov * 10.3 Using gcov with GCC Optimization * 10.4 Brief Description of gcov Data Files * 10.5 Data File Relocation to Support Cross-Profiling * 11 gcov-tool—an Offline Gcda Profile Processing Tool * 11.1 Introduction to gcov-tool * 11.2 Invoking gcov-tool * 12 gcov-dump—an Offline Gcda and Gcno Profile Dump Tool * 12.1 Introduction to gcov-dump * 12.2 Invoking gcov-dump * 13 Known Causes of Trouble with GCC * 13.1 Actual Bugs We Haven't Fixed Yet * 13.2 Interoperation * 13.3 Incompatibilities of GCC * 13.4 Fixed Header Files * 13.5 Standard Libraries * 13.6 Disappointments and Misunderstandings * 13.7 Common Misunderstandings with GNU C++ * 13.7.1 Declare and Define Static Members * 13.7.2 Name Lookup, Templates, and Accessing Members of Base Classes * 13.7.3 Temporaries May Vanish Before You Expect * 13.7.4 Implicit Copy-Assignment for Virtual Bases * 13.8 Certain Changes We Don't Want to Make * 13.9 Warning Messages and Error Messages * 14 Reporting Bugs * 14.1 Have You Found a Bug? * 14.2 How and Where to Report Bugs * 15 How To Get Help with GCC * 16 Contributing to GCC Development * Funding Free Software * The GNU Project and GNU/Linux * GNU General Public License * GNU Free Documentation License * ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents * Contributors to GCC * Option Index * Keyword Index ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Introduction This manual documents how to use the GNU compilers, as well as their features and incompatibilities, and how to report bugs. It corresponds to the compilers (GCC) version 9.3.0. The internals of the GNU compilers, including how to port them to new targets and some information about how to write front ends for new languages, are documented in a separate manual. See Introduction in GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1 Programming Languages Supported by GCC GCC stands for “GNU Compiler Collection”. GCC is an integrated distribution of compilers for several major programming languages. These languages currently include C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, D, Go, and BRIG (HSAIL). The abbreviation GCC has multiple meanings in common use. The current official meaning is “GNU Compiler Collection”, which refers generically to the complete suite of tools. The name historically stood for “GNU C Compiler”, and this usage is still common when the emphasis is on compiling C programs. Finally, the name is also used when speaking of the language-independent component of GCC: code shared among the compilers for all supported languages. The language-independent component of GCC includes the majority of the optimizers, as well as the “back ends” that generate machine code for various processors. The part of a compiler that is specific to a particular language is called the “front end”. In addition to the front ends that are integrated components of GCC, there are several other front ends that are maintained separately. These support languages such as Mercury, and COBOL. To use these, they must be built together with GCC proper. Most of the compilers for languages other than C have their own names. The C++ compiler is G++, the Ada compiler is GNAT, and so on. When we talk about compiling one of those languages, we might refer to that compiler by its own name, or as GCC. Either is correct. Historically, compilers for many languages, including C++ and Fortran, have been implemented as “preprocessors” which emit another high level language such as C. None of the compilers included in GCC are implemented this way; they all generate machine code directly. This sort of preprocessor should not be confused with the C preprocessor, which is an integral feature of the C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ languages. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2 Language Standards Supported by GCC For each language compiled by GCC for which there is a standard, GCC attempts to follow one or more versions of that standard, possibly with some exceptions, and possibly with some extensions. 2.1 C Language The original ANSI C standard (X3.159-1989) was ratified in 1989 and published in 1990. This standard was ratified as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990) later in 1990. There were no technical differences between these publications, although the sections of the ANSI standard were renumbered and became clauses in the ISO standard. The ANSI standard, but not the ISO standard, also came with a Rationale document. This standard, in both its forms, is commonly known as C89, or occasionally as C90, from the dates of ratification. To select this standard in GCC, use one of the options -ansi, -std=c90 or -std=iso9899:1990; to obtain all the diagnostics required by the standard, you should also specify -pedantic (or -pedantic-errors if you want them to be errors rather than warnings). See Options Controlling C Dialect. Errors in the 1990 ISO C standard were corrected in two Technical Corrigenda published in 1994 and 1996. GCC does not support the uncorrected version. An amendment to the 1990 standard was published in 1995. This amendment added digraphs and __STDC_VERSION__ to the language, but otherwise concerned the library. This amendment is commonly known as AMD1; the amended standard is sometimes known as C94 or C95. To select this standard in GCC, use the option -std=iso9899:199409 (with, as for other standard versions, -pedantic to receive all required diagnostics). A new edition of the ISO C standard was published in 1999 as ISO/IEC 9899:1999, and is commonly known as C99. (While in development, drafts of this standard version were referred to as C9X.) GCC has substantially complete support for this standard version; see http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html for details. To select this standard, use -std=c99 or -std=iso9899:1999. Errors in the 1999 ISO C standard were corrected in three Technical Corrigenda published in 2001, 2004 and 2007. GCC does not support the uncorrected version. A fourth version of the C standard, known as C11, was published in 2011 as ISO/IEC 9899:2011. (While in development, drafts of this standard version were referred to as C1X.) GCC has substantially complete support for this standard, enabled with -std=c11 or -std=iso9899:2011. A version with corrections integrated was prepared in 2017 and published in 2018 as ISO/IEC 9899:2018; it is known as C17 and is supported with -std=c17 or -std=iso9899:2017; the corrections are also applied with -std=c11, and the only difference between the options is the value of __STDC_VERSION__. A further version of the C standard, known as C2X, is under development; experimental and incomplete support for this is enabled with -std=c2x. By default, GCC provides some extensions to the C language that, on rare occasions conflict with the C standard. See Extensions to the C Language Family. Some features that are part of the C99 standard are accepted as extensions in C90 mode, and some features that are part of the C11 standard are accepted as extensions in C90 and C99 modes. Use of the -std options listed above disables these extensions where they conflict with the C standard version selected. You may also select an extended version of the C language explicitly with -std=gnu90 (for C90 with GNU extensions), -std=gnu99 (for C99 with GNU extensions) or -std=gnu11 (for C11 with GNU extensions). The default, if no C language dialect options are given, is -std=gnu11. The ISO C standard defines (in clause 4) two classes of conforming implementation. A conforming hosted implementation supports the whole standard including all the library facilities; a conforming freestanding implementation is only required to provide certain library facilities: those in , , , and ; since AMD1, also those in ; since C99, also those in and ; and since C11, also those in and . In addition, complex types, added in C99, are not required for freestanding implementations. The standard also defines two environments for programs, a freestanding environment, required of all implementations and which may not have library facilities beyond those required of freestanding implementations, where the handling of program startup and termination are implementation-defined; and a hosted environment, which is not required, in which all the library facilities are provided and startup is through a function int main (void) or int main (int, char *[]). An OS kernel is an example of a program running in a freestanding environment; a program using the facilities of an operating system is an example of a program running in a hosted environment. GCC aims towards being usable as a conforming freestanding implementation, or as the compiler for a conforming hosted implementation. By default, it acts as the compiler for a hosted implementation, defining __STDC_HOSTED__ as 1 and presuming that when the names of ISO C functions are used, they have the semantics defined in the standard. To make it act as a conforming freestanding implementation for a freestanding environment, use the option -ffreestanding; it then defines __STDC_HOSTED__ to 0 and does not make assumptions about the meanings of function names from the standard library, with exceptions noted below. To build an OS kernel, you may well still need to make your own arrangements for linking and startup. See Options Controlling C Dialect. GCC does not provide the library facilities required only of hosted implementations, nor yet all the facilities required by C99 of freestanding implementations on all platforms. To use the facilities of a hosted environment, you need to find them elsewhere (for example, in the GNU C library). See Standard Libraries. Most of the compiler support routines used by GCC are present in libgcc, but there are a few exceptions. GCC requires the freestanding environment provide memcpy, memmove, memset and memcmp. Finally, if __builtin_trap is used, and the target does not implement the trap pattern, then GCC emits a call to abort. For references to Technical Corrigenda, Rationale documents and information concerning the history of C that is available online, see http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html 2.2 C++ Language GCC supports the original ISO C++ standard published in 1998, and the 2011 and 2014 revisions. The original ISO C++ standard was published as the ISO standard (ISO/IEC 14882:1998) and amended by a Technical Corrigenda published in 2003 (ISO/IEC 14882:2003). These standards are referred to as C++98 and C++03, respectively. GCC implements the majority of C++98 (export is a notable exception) and most of the changes in C++03. To select this standard in GCC, use one of the options -ansi, -std=c++98, or -std=c++03; to obtain all the diagnostics required by the standard, you should also specify -pedantic (or -pedantic-errors if you want them to be errors rather than warnings). A revised ISO C++ standard was published in 2011 as ISO/IEC 14882:2011, and is referred to as C++11; before its publication it was commonly referred to as C++0x. C++11 contains several changes to the C++ language, all of which have been implemented in GCC. For details see https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx11. To select this standard in GCC, use the option -std=c++11. Another revised ISO C++ standard was published in 2014 as ISO/IEC 14882:2014, and is referred to as C++14; before its publication it was sometimes referred to as C++1y. C++14 contains several further changes to the C++ language, all of which have been implemented in GCC. For details see https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx14. To select this standard in GCC, use the option -std=c++14. The C++ language was further revised in 2017 and ISO/IEC 14882:2017 was published. This is referred to as C++17, and before publication was often referred to as C++1z. GCC supports all the changes in the new specification. For further details see https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx1z. Use the option -std=c++17 to select this variant of C++. More information about the C++ standards is available on the ISO C++ committee's web site at http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/. To obtain all the diagnostics required by any of the standard versions described above you should specify -pedantic or -pedantic-errors, otherwise GCC will allow some non-ISO C++ features as extensions. See Warning Options. By default, GCC also provides some additional extensions to the C++ language that on rare occasions conflict with the C++ standard. See Options Controlling C++ Dialect. Use of the -std options listed above disables these extensions where they they conflict with the C++ standard version selected. You may also select an extended version of the C++ language explicitly with -std=gnu++98 (for C++98 with GNU extensions), or -std=gnu++11 (for C++11 with GNU extensions), or -std=gnu++14 (for C++14 with GNU extensions), or -std=gnu++17 (for C++17 with GNU extensions). The default, if no C++ language dialect options are given, is -std=gnu++14. 2.3 Objective-C and Objective-C++ Languages GCC supports “traditional” Objective-C (also known as “Objective-C 1.0”) and contains support for the Objective-C exception and synchronization syntax. It has also support for a number of “Objective-C 2.0” language extensions, including properties, fast enumeration (only for Objective-C), method attributes and the @optional and @required keywords in protocols. GCC supports Objective-C++ and features available in Objective-C are also available in Objective-C++. GCC by default uses the GNU Objective-C runtime library, which is part of GCC and is not the same as the Apple/NeXT Objective-C runtime library used on Apple systems. There are a number of differences documented in this manual. The options -fgnu-runtime and -fnext-runtime allow you to switch between producing output that works with the GNU Objective-C runtime library and output that works with the Apple/NeXT Objective-C runtime library. There is no formal written standard for Objective-C or Objective-C++. The authoritative manual on traditional Objective-C (1.0) is “Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective-C Language”: http://www.gnustep.org/resources/documentation/ObjectivCBook.pdf is the original NeXTstep document. The Objective-C exception and synchronization syntax (that is, the keywords @try, @throw, @catch, @finally and @synchronized) is supported by GCC and is enabled with the option -fobjc-exceptions. The syntax is briefly documented in this manual and in the Objective-C 2.0 manuals from Apple. The Objective-C 2.0 language extensions and features are automatically enabled; they include properties (via the @property, @synthesize and @dynamic keywords), fast enumeration (not available in Objective-C++), attributes for methods (such as deprecated, noreturn, sentinel, format), the unused attribute for method arguments, the @package keyword for instance variables and the @optional and @required keywords in protocols. You can disable all these Objective-C 2.0 language extensions with the option -fobjc-std=objc1, which causes the compiler to recognize the same Objective-C language syntax recognized by GCC 4.0, and to produce an error if one of the new features is used. GCC has currently no support for non-fragile instance variables. The authoritative manual on Objective-C 2.0 is available from Apple: * https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ProgrammingWithObjectiveC/Introduction/Introduction.html For more information concerning the history of Objective-C that is available online, see http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html 2.4 Go Language As of the GCC 4.7.1 release, GCC supports the Go 1 language standard, described at https://golang.org/doc/go1. 2.5 HSA Intermediate Language (HSAIL) GCC can compile the binary representation (BRIG) of the HSAIL text format as described in HSA Programmer's Reference Manual version 1.0.1. This capability is typically utilized to implement the HSA runtime API's HSAIL finalization extension for a gcc supported processor. HSA standards are freely available at http://www.hsafoundation.com/standards/. 2.6 D language GCC supports the D 2.0 programming language. The D language itself is currently defined by its reference implementation and supporting language specification, described at https://dlang.org/spec/spec.html. 2.7 References for Other Languages See About This Guide in GNAT Reference Manual, for information on standard conformance and compatibility of the Ada compiler. See Standards in The GNU Fortran Compiler, for details of standards supported by GNU Fortran. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Top Link: next: Option Summary Link: prev: Standards ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3 GCC Command Options 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. See Options Controlling the Kind of Output. Other options are passed on to one or more stages 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 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 specific version of GCC. When you compile C++ programs, you should invoke GCC as g++ instead. See Compiling C++ Programs, for information about the differences in behavior between gcc and g++ when compiling C++ programs. 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: -dv is very different from '-d -v'. 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. Also, the placement of the -l option is significant. 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 is -fno-foo. This manual documents only one of these two forms, whichever one is not the default. Some options take one or more arguments typically separated either by a space or by the equals sign ('=') from the option name. Unless documented otherwise, an argument can be either numeric or a string. Numeric arguments must typically be small unsigned decimal or hexadecimal integers. Hexadecimal arguments must begin with the '0x' prefix. Arguments to options that specify a size threshold of some sort may be arbitrarily large decimal or hexadecimal integers followed by a byte size suffix designating a multiple of bytes such as kB and KiB for kilobyte and kibibyte, respectively, MB and MiB for megabyte and mebibyte, GB and GiB for gigabyte and gigibyte, and so on. Such arguments are designated by byte-size in the following text. Refer to the NIST, IEC, and other relevant national and international standards for the full listing and explanation of the binary and decimal byte size prefixes. See Option Index, for an index to GCC's options. • Option Summary: Brief list of all options, without explanations. • Overall Options: Controlling the kind of output: an executable, object files, assembler files, or preprocessed source. • Invoking G++: Compiling C++ programs. • C Dialect Options: Controlling the variant of C language compiled. • C++ Dialect Options: Variations on C++. • Objective-C and Variations on Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options: Objective-C++. • Diagnostic Message Controlling how diagnostics should be Formatting Options: formatted. • Warning Options: How picky should the compiler be? • Debugging Options: Producing debuggable code. • Optimize Options: How much optimization? • Instrumentation Options: Enabling profiling and extra run-time error checking. • Preprocessor Options: Controlling header files and macro definitions. Also, getting dependency information for Make. • Assembler Options: Passing options to the assembler. • Link Options: Specifying libraries and so on. • Directory Options: Where to find header files and libraries. Where to find the compiler executable files. • Code Gen Options: Specifying conventions for function calls, data layout and register usage. • Developer Options: Printing GCC configuration info, statistics, and debugging dumps. • Submodel Options: Target-specific options, such as compiling for a specific processor variant. • Spec Files: How to pass switches to sub-processes. • Environment Variables: Env vars that affect GCC. • Precompiled Headers: Compiling a header once, and using it many times. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.1 Option Summary Here is a summary of all the options, grouped by type. Explanations are in the following sections. Overall Options See Options Controlling the Kind of Output. -c -S -E -o file -x language -v -### --help[=class[,…]] --target-help --version -pass-exit-codes -pipe -specs=file -wrapper @file -ffile-prefix-map=old=new -fplugin=file -fplugin-arg-name=arg -fdump-ada-spec[-slim] -fada-spec-parent=unit -fdump-go-spec=file C Language Options See Options Controlling C Dialect. -ansi -std=standard -fgnu89-inline -fpermitted-flt-eval-methods=standard -aux-info filename -fallow-parameterless-variadic-functions -fno-asm -fno-builtin -fno-builtin-function -fgimple -fhosted -ffreestanding -fopenacc -fopenacc-dim=geom -fopenmp -fopenmp-simd -fms-extensions -fplan9-extensions -fsso-struct=endianness -fallow-single-precision -fcond-mismatch -flax-vector-conversions -fsigned-bitfields -fsigned-char -funsigned-bitfields -funsigned-char C++ Language Options See Options Controlling C++ Dialect. -fabi-version=n -fno-access-control -faligned-new=n -fargs-in-order=n -fchar8_t -fcheck-new -fconstexpr-depth=n -fconstexpr-loop-limit=n -fconstexpr-ops-limit=n -fno-elide-constructors -fno-enforce-eh-specs -fno-gnu-keywords -fno-implicit-templates -fno-implicit-inline-templates -fno-implement-inlines -fms-extensions -fnew-inheriting-ctors -fnew-ttp-matching -fno-nonansi-builtins -fnothrow-opt -fno-operator-names -fno-optional-diags -fpermissive -fno-pretty-templates -frepo -fno-rtti -fsized-deallocation -ftemplate-backtrace-limit=n -ftemplate-depth=n -fno-threadsafe-statics -fuse-cxa-atexit -fno-weak -nostdinc++ -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -fvisibility-ms-compat -fext-numeric-literals -Wabi=n -Wabi-tag -Wconversion-null -Wctor-dtor-privacy -Wdelete-non-virtual-dtor -Wdeprecated-copy -Wdeprecated-copy-dtor -Wliteral-suffix -Wmultiple-inheritance -Wno-init-list-lifetime -Wnamespaces -Wnarrowing -Wpessimizing-move -Wredundant-move -Wnoexcept -Wnoexcept-type -Wclass-memaccess -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wreorder -Wregister -Weffc++ -Wstrict-null-sentinel -Wtemplates -Wno-non-template-friend -Wold-style-cast -Woverloaded-virtual -Wno-pmf-conversions -Wno-class-conversion -Wno-terminate -Wsign-promo -Wvirtual-inheritance Objective-C and Objective-C++ Language Options See Options Controlling Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialects. -fconstant-string-class=class-name -fgnu-runtime -fnext-runtime -fno-nil-receivers -fobjc-abi-version=n -fobjc-call-cxx-cdtors -fobjc-direct-dispatch -fobjc-exceptions -fobjc-gc -fobjc-nilcheck -fobjc-std=objc1 -fno-local-ivars -fivar-visibility=[public|protected|private|package] -freplace-objc-classes -fzero-link -gen-decls -Wassign-intercept -Wno-protocol -Wselector -Wstrict-selector-match -Wundeclared-selector Diagnostic Message Formatting Options See Options to Control Diagnostic Messages Formatting. -fmessage-length=n -fdiagnostics-show-location=[once|every-line] -fdiagnostics-color=[auto|never|always] -fdiagnostics-format=[text|json] -fno-diagnostics-show-option -fno-diagnostics-show-caret -fno-diagnostics-show-labels -fno-diagnostics-show-line-numbers -fdiagnostics-minimum-margin-width=width -fdiagnostics-parseable-fixits -fdiagnostics-generate-patch -fdiagnostics-show-template-tree -fno-elide-type -fno-show-column Warning Options See Options to Request or Suppress Warnings. -fsyntax-only -fmax-errors=n -Wpedantic -pedantic-errors -w -Wextra -Wall -Waddress -Waddress-of-packed-member -Waggregate-return -Waligned-new -Walloc-zero -Walloc-size-larger-than=byte-size -Walloca -Walloca-larger-than=byte-size -Wno-aggressive-loop-optimizations -Warray-bounds -Warray-bounds=n -Wno-attributes -Wattribute-alias=n -Wbool-compare -Wbool-operation -Wno-builtin-declaration-mismatch -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -Wc90-c99-compat -Wc99-c11-compat -Wc11-c2x-compat -Wc++-compat -Wc++11-compat -Wc++14-compat -Wc++17-compat -Wcast-align -Wcast-align=strict -Wcast-function-type -Wcast-qual -Wchar-subscripts -Wcatch-value -Wcatch-value=n -Wclobbered -Wcomment -Wconditionally-supported -Wconversion -Wcoverage-mismatch -Wno-cpp -Wdangling-else -Wdate-time -Wdelete-incomplete -Wno-attribute-warning -Wno-deprecated -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wno-designated-init -Wdisabled-optimization -Wno-discarded-qualifiers -Wno-discarded-array-qualifiers -Wno-div-by-zero -Wdouble-promotion -Wduplicated-branches -Wduplicated-cond -Wempty-body -Wenum-compare -Wno-endif-labels -Wexpansion-to-defined -Werror -Werror=* -Wextra-semi -Wfatal-errors -Wfloat-equal -Wformat -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-contains-nul -Wno-format-extra-args -Wformat-nonliteral -Wformat-overflow=n -Wformat-security -Wformat-signedness -Wformat-truncation=n -Wformat-y2k -Wframe-address -Wframe-larger-than=byte-size -Wno-free-nonheap-object -Wjump-misses-init -Whsa -Wif-not-aligned -Wignored-qualifiers -Wignored-attributes -Wincompatible-pointer-types -Wimplicit -Wimplicit-fallthrough -Wimplicit-fallthrough=n -Wimplicit-function-declaration -Wimplicit-int -Winit-self -Winline -Wno-int-conversion -Wint-in-bool-context -Wno-int-to-pointer-cast -Winvalid-memory-model -Wno-invalid-offsetof -Winvalid-pch -Wlarger-than=byte-size -Wlogical-op -Wlogical-not-parentheses -Wlong-long -Wmain -Wmaybe-uninitialized -Wmemset-elt-size -Wmemset-transposed-args -Wmisleading-indentation -Wmissing-attributes -Wmissing-braces -Wmissing-field-initializers -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-profile -Wno-multichar -Wmultistatement-macros -Wnonnull -Wnonnull-compare -Wnormalized=[none|id|nfc|nfkc] -Wnull-dereference -Wodr -Wno-overflow -Wopenmp-simd -Woverride-init-side-effects -Woverlength-strings -Wpacked -Wpacked-bitfield-compat -Wpacked-not-aligned -Wpadded -Wparentheses -Wno-pedantic-ms-format -Wplacement-new -Wplacement-new=n -Wpointer-arith -Wpointer-compare -Wno-pointer-to-int-cast -Wno-pragmas -Wno-prio-ctor-dtor -Wredundant-decls -Wrestrict -Wno-return-local-addr -Wreturn-type -Wsequence-point -Wshadow -Wno-shadow-ivar -Wshadow=global, -Wshadow=local, -Wshadow=compatible-local -Wshift-overflow -Wshift-overflow=n -Wshift-count-negative -Wshift-count-overflow -Wshift-negative-value -Wsign-compare -Wsign-conversion -Wfloat-conversion -Wno-scalar-storage-order -Wsizeof-pointer-div -Wsizeof-pointer-memaccess -Wsizeof-array-argument -Wstack-protector -Wstack-usage=byte-size -Wstrict-aliasing -Wstrict-aliasing=n -Wstrict-overflow -Wstrict-overflow=n -Wstringop-overflow=n -Wstringop-truncation -Wsubobject-linkage -Wsuggest-attribute=[pure|const|noreturn|format|malloc] -Wsuggest-final-types -Wsuggest-final-methods -Wsuggest-override -Wswitch -Wswitch-bool -Wswitch-default -Wswitch-enum -Wswitch-unreachable -Wsync-nand -Wsystem-headers -Wtautological-compare -Wtrampolines -Wtrigraphs -Wtype-limits -Wundef -Wuninitialized -Wunknown-pragmas -Wunsuffixed-float-constants -Wunused -Wunused-function -Wunused-label -Wunused-local-typedefs -Wunused-macros -Wunused-parameter -Wno-unused-result -Wunused-value -Wunused-variable -Wunused-const-variable -Wunused-const-variable=n -Wunused-but-set-parameter -Wunused-but-set-variable -Wuseless-cast -Wvariadic-macros -Wvector-operation-performance -Wvla -Wvla-larger-than=byte-size -Wvolatile-register-var -Wwrite-strings -Wzero-as-null-pointer-constant C and Objective-C-only Warning Options -Wbad-function-cast -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-parameter-type -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wold-style-declaration -Wold-style-definition -Wstrict-prototypes -Wtraditional -Wtraditional-conversion -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wpointer-sign Debugging Options See Options for Debugging Your Program. -g -glevel -gdwarf -gdwarf-version -ggdb -grecord-gcc-switches -gno-record-gcc-switches -gstabs -gstabs+ -gstrict-dwarf -gno-strict-dwarf -gas-loc-support -gno-as-loc-support -gas-locview-support -gno-as-locview-support -gcolumn-info -gno-column-info -gstatement-frontiers -gno-statement-frontiers -gvariable-location-views -gno-variable-location-views -ginternal-reset-location-views -gno-internal-reset-location-views -ginline-points -gno-inline-points -gvms -gxcoff -gxcoff+ -gz[=type] -gsplit-dwarf -gdescribe-dies -gno-describe-dies -fdebug-prefix-map=old=new -fdebug-types-section -fno-eliminate-unused-debug-types -femit-struct-debug-baseonly -femit-struct-debug-reduced -femit-struct-debug-detailed[=spec-list] -feliminate-unused-debug-symbols -femit-class-debug-always -fno-merge-debug-strings -fno-dwarf2-cfi-asm -fvar-tracking -fvar-tracking-assignments Optimization Options See Options that Control Optimization. -faggressive-loop-optimizations -falign-functions[=n[:m:[n2[:m2]]]] -falign-jumps[=n[:m:[n2[:m2]]]] -falign-labels[=n[:m:[n2[:m2]]]] -falign-loops[=n[:m:[n2[:m2]]]] -fassociative-math -fauto-profile -fauto-profile[=path] -fauto-inc-dec -fbranch-probabilities -fbranch-target-load-optimize -fbranch-target-load-optimize2 -fbtr-bb-exclusive -fcaller-saves -fcombine-stack-adjustments -fconserve-stack -fcompare-elim -fcprop-registers -fcrossjumping -fcse-follow-jumps -fcse-skip-blocks -fcx-fortran-rules -fcx-limited-range -fdata-sections -fdce -fdelayed-branch -fdelete-null-pointer-checks -fdevirtualize -fdevirtualize-speculatively -fdevirtualize-at-ltrans -fdse -fearly-inlining -fipa-sra -fexpensive-optimizations -ffat-lto-objects -ffast-math -ffinite-math-only -ffloat-store -fexcess-precision=style -fforward-propagate -ffp-contract=style -ffunction-sections -fgcse -fgcse-after-reload -fgcse-las -fgcse-lm -fgraphite-identity -fgcse-sm -fhoist-adjacent-loads -fif-conversion -fif-conversion2 -findirect-inlining -finline-functions -finline-functions-called-once -finline-limit=n -finline-small-functions -fipa-cp -fipa-cp-clone -fipa-bit-cp -fipa-vrp -fipa-pta -fipa-profile -fipa-pure-const -fipa-reference -fipa-reference-addressable -fipa-stack-alignment -fipa-icf -fira-algorithm=algorithm -flive-patching=level -fira-region=region -fira-hoist-pressure -fira-loop-pressure -fno-ira-share-save-slots -fno-ira-share-spill-slots -fisolate-erroneous-paths-dereference -fisolate-erroneous-paths-attribute -fivopts -fkeep-inline-functions -fkeep-static-functions -fkeep-static-consts -flimit-function-alignment -flive-range-shrinkage -floop-block -floop-interchange -floop-strip-mine -floop-unroll-and-jam -floop-nest-optimize -floop-parallelize-all -flra-remat -flto -flto-compression-level -flto-partition=alg -fmerge-all-constants -fmerge-constants -fmodulo-sched -fmodulo-sched-allow-regmoves -fmove-loop-invariants -fno-branch-count-reg -fno-defer-pop -fno-fp-int-builtin-inexact -fno-function-cse -fno-guess-branch-probability -fno-inline -fno-math-errno -fno-peephole -fno-peephole2 -fno-printf-return-value -fno-sched-interblock -fno-sched-spec -fno-signed-zeros -fno-toplevel-reorder -fno-trapping-math -fno-zero-initialized-in-bss -fomit-frame-pointer -foptimize-sibling-calls -fpartial-inlining -fpeel-loops -fpredictive-commoning -fprefetch-loop-arrays -fprofile-correction -fprofile-use -fprofile-use=path -fprofile-values -fprofile-reorder-functions -freciprocal-math -free -frename-registers -freorder-blocks -freorder-blocks-algorithm=algorithm -freorder-blocks-and-partition -freorder-functions -frerun-cse-after-loop -freschedule-modulo-scheduled-loops -frounding-math -fsave-optimization-record -fsched2-use-superblocks -fsched-pressure -fsched-spec-load -fsched-spec-load-dangerous -fsched-stalled-insns-dep[=n] -fsched-stalled-insns[=n] -fsched-group-heuristic -fsched-critical-path-heuristic -fsched-spec-insn-heuristic -fsched-rank-heuristic -fsched-last-insn-heuristic -fsched-dep-count-heuristic -fschedule-fusion -fschedule-insns -fschedule-insns2 -fsection-anchors -fselective-scheduling -fselective-scheduling2 -fsel-sched-pipelining -fsel-sched-pipelining-outer-loops -fsemantic-interposition -fshrink-wrap -fshrink-wrap-separate -fsignaling-nans -fsingle-precision-constant -fsplit-ivs-in-unroller -fsplit-loops -fsplit-paths -fsplit-wide-types -fssa-backprop -fssa-phiopt -fstdarg-opt -fstore-merging -fstrict-aliasing -fthread-jumps -ftracer -ftree-bit-ccp -ftree-builtin-call-dce -ftree-ccp -ftree-ch -ftree-coalesce-vars -ftree-copy-prop -ftree-dce -ftree-dominator-opts -ftree-dse -ftree-forwprop -ftree-fre -fcode-hoisting -ftree-loop-if-convert -ftree-loop-im -ftree-phiprop -ftree-loop-distribution -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns -ftree-loop-ivcanon -ftree-loop-linear -ftree-loop-optimize -ftree-loop-vectorize -ftree-parallelize-loops=n -ftree-pre -ftree-partial-pre -ftree-pta -ftree-reassoc -ftree-scev-cprop -ftree-sink -ftree-slsr -ftree-sra -ftree-switch-conversion -ftree-tail-merge -ftree-ter -ftree-vectorize -ftree-vrp -funconstrained-commons -funit-at-a-time -funroll-all-loops -funroll-loops -funsafe-math-optimizations -funswitch-loops -fipa-ra -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller -fvect-cost-model -fvpt -fweb -fwhole-program -fwpa -fuse-linker-plugin --param name=value -O -O0 -O1 -O2 -O3 -Os -Ofast -Og Program Instrumentation Options See Program Instrumentation Options. -p -pg -fprofile-arcs --coverage -ftest-coverage -fprofile-abs-path -fprofile-dir=path -fprofile-generate -fprofile-generate=path -fprofile-update=method -fprofile-filter-files=regex -fprofile-exclude-files=regex -fsanitize=style -fsanitize-recover -fsanitize-recover=style -fasan-shadow-offset=number -fsanitize-sections=s1,s2,... -fsanitize-undefined-trap-on-error -fbounds-check -fcf-protection=[full|branch|return|none] -fstack-protector -fstack-protector-all -fstack-protector-strong -fstack-protector-explicit -fstack-check -fstack-limit-register=reg -fstack-limit-symbol=sym -fno-stack-limit -fsplit-stack -fvtable-verify=[std|preinit|none] -fvtv-counts -fvtv-debug -finstrument-functions -finstrument-functions-exclude-function-list=sym,sym,… -finstrument-functions-exclude-file-list=file,file,… Preprocessor Options See Options Controlling the Preprocessor. -Aquestion=answer -A-question[=answer] -C -CC -Dmacro[=defn] -dD -dI -dM -dN -dU -fdebug-cpp -fdirectives-only -fdollars-in-identifiers -fexec-charset=charset -fextended-identifiers -finput-charset=charset -fmacro-prefix-map=old=new -fno-canonical-system-headers -fpch-deps -fpch-preprocess -fpreprocessed -ftabstop=width -ftrack-macro-expansion -fwide-exec-charset=charset -fworking-directory -H -imacros file -include file -M -MD -MF -MG -MM -MMD -MP -MQ -MT -no-integrated-cpp -P -pthread -remap -traditional -traditional-cpp -trigraphs -Umacro -undef -Wp,option -Xpreprocessor option Assembler Options See Passing Options to the Assembler. -Wa,option -Xassembler option Linker Options See Options for Linking. object-file-name -fuse-ld=linker -llibrary -nostartfiles -nodefaultlibs -nolibc -nostdlib -e entry --entry=entry -pie -pthread -r -rdynamic -s -static -static-pie -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -static-libasan -static-libtsan -static-liblsan -static-libubsan -shared -shared-libgcc -symbolic -T script -Wl,option -Xlinker option -u symbol -z keyword Directory Options See Options for Directory Search. -Bprefix -Idir -I- -idirafter dir -imacros file -imultilib dir -iplugindir=dir -iprefix file -iquote dir -isysroot dir -isystem dir -iwithprefix dir -iwithprefixbefore dir -Ldir -no-canonical-prefixes --no-sysroot-suffix -nostdinc -nostdinc++ --sysroot=dir Code Generation Options See Options for Code Generation Conventions. -fcall-saved-reg -fcall-used-reg -ffixed-reg -fexceptions -fnon-call-exceptions -fdelete-dead-exceptions -funwind-tables -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -fno-gnu-unique -finhibit-size-directive -fno-common -fno-ident -fpcc-struct-return -fpic -fPIC -fpie -fPIE -fno-plt -fno-jump-tables -frecord-gcc-switches -freg-struct-return -fshort-enums -fshort-wchar -fverbose-asm -fpack-struct[=n] -fleading-underscore -ftls-model=model -fstack-reuse=reuse_level -ftrampolines -ftrapv -fwrapv -fvisibility=[default|internal|hidden|protected] -fstrict-volatile-bitfields -fsync-libcalls Developer Options See GCC Developer Options. -dletters -dumpspecs -dumpmachine -dumpversion -dumpfullversion -fchecking -fchecking=n -fdbg-cnt-list -fdbg-cnt=counter-value-list -fdisable-ipa-pass_name -fdisable-rtl-pass_name -fdisable-rtl-pass-name=range-list -fdisable-tree-pass_name -fdisable-tree-pass-name=range-list -fdump-debug -fdump-earlydebug -fdump-noaddr -fdump-unnumbered -fdump-unnumbered-links -fdump-final-insns[=file] -fdump-ipa-all -fdump-ipa-cgraph -fdump-ipa-inline -fdump-lang-all -fdump-lang-switch -fdump-lang-switch-options -fdump-lang-switch-options=filename -fdump-passes -fdump-rtl-pass -fdump-rtl-pass=filename -fdump-statistics -fdump-tree-all -fdump-tree-switch -fdump-tree-switch-options -fdump-tree-switch-options=filename -fcompare-debug[=opts] -fcompare-debug-second -fenable-kind-pass -fenable-kind-pass=range-list -fira-verbose=n -flto-report -flto-report-wpa -fmem-report-wpa -fmem-report -fpre-ipa-mem-report -fpost-ipa-mem-report -fopt-info -fopt-info-options[=file] -fprofile-report -frandom-seed=string -fsched-verbose=n -fsel-sched-verbose -fsel-sched-dump-cfg -fsel-sched-pipelining-verbose -fstats -fstack-usage -ftime-report -ftime-report-details -fvar-tracking-assignments-toggle -gtoggle -print-file-name=library -print-libgcc-file-name -print-multi-directory -print-multi-lib -print-multi-os-directory -print-prog-name=program -print-search-dirs -Q -print-sysroot -print-sysroot-headers-suffix -save-temps -save-temps=cwd -save-temps=obj -time[=file] Machine-Dependent Options See Machine-Dependent Options. AArch64 Options -mabi=name -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -mgeneral-regs-only -mcmodel=tiny -mcmodel=small -mcmodel=large -mstrict-align -mno-strict-align -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -mtls-dialect=desc -mtls-dialect=traditional -mtls-size=size -mfix-cortex-a53-835769 -mfix-cortex-a53-843419 -mlow-precision-recip-sqrt -mlow-precision-sqrt -mlow-precision-div -mpc-relative-literal-loads -msign-return-address=scope -mbranch-protection=none|standard|pac-ret[+leaf]|bti -march=name -mcpu=name -mtune=name -moverride=string -mverbose-cost-dump -mstack-protector-guard=guard -mstack-protector-guard-reg=sysreg -mstack-protector-guard-offset=offset -mtrack-speculation Adapteva Epiphany Options -mhalf-reg-file -mprefer-short-insn-regs -mbranch-cost=num -mcmove -mnops=num -msoft-cmpsf -msplit-lohi -mpost-inc -mpost-modify -mstack-offset=num -mround-nearest -mlong-calls -mshort-calls -msmall16 -mfp-mode=mode -mvect-double -max-vect-align=num -msplit-vecmove-early -m1reg-reg AMD GCN Options -march=gpu -mtune=gpu -mstack-size=bytes ARC Options -mbarrel-shifter -mjli-always -mcpu=cpu -mA6 -mARC600 -mA7 -mARC700 -mdpfp -mdpfp-compact -mdpfp-fast -mno-dpfp-lrsr -mea -mno-mpy -mmul32x16 -mmul64 -matomic -mnorm -mspfp -mspfp-compact -mspfp-fast -msimd -msoft-float -mswap -mcrc -mdsp-packa -mdvbf -mlock -mmac-d16 -mmac-24 -mrtsc -mswape -mtelephony -mxy -misize -mannotate-align -marclinux -marclinux_prof -mlong-calls -mmedium-calls -msdata -mirq-ctrl-saved -mrgf-banked-regs -mlpc-width=width -G num -mvolatile-cache -mtp-regno=regno -malign-call -mauto-modify-reg -mbbit-peephole -mno-brcc -mcase-vector-pcrel -mcompact-casesi -mno-cond-exec -mearly-cbranchsi -mexpand-adddi -mindexed-loads -mlra -mlra-priority-none -mlra-priority-compact mlra-priority-noncompact -mmillicode -mmixed-code -mq-class -mRcq -mRcw -msize-level=level -mtune=cpu -mmultcost=num -mcode-density-frame -munalign-prob-threshold=probability -mmpy-option=multo -mdiv-rem -mcode-density -mll64 -mfpu=fpu -mrf16 -mbranch-index ARM Options -mapcs-frame -mno-apcs-frame -mabi=name -mapcs-stack-check -mno-apcs-stack-check -mapcs-reentrant -mno-apcs-reentrant -mgeneral-regs-only -msched-prolog -mno-sched-prolog -mlittle-endian -mbig-endian -mbe8 -mbe32 -mfloat-abi=name -mfp16-format=name -mthumb-interwork -mno-thumb-interwork -mcpu=name -march=name -mfpu=name -mtune=name -mprint-tune-info -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 -mpoke-function-name -mthumb -marm -mflip-thumb -mtpcs-frame -mtpcs-leaf-frame -mcaller-super-interworking -mcallee-super-interworking -mtp=name -mtls-dialect=dialect -mword-relocations -mfix-cortex-m3-ldrd -munaligned-access -mneon-for-64bits -mslow-flash-data -masm-syntax-unified -mrestrict-it -mverbose-cost-dump -mpure-code -mcmse AVR Options -mmcu=mcu -mabsdata -maccumulate-args -mbranch-cost=cost -mcall-prologues -mgas-isr-prologues -mint8 -mn_flash=size -mno-interrupts -mmain-is-OS_task -mrelax -mrmw -mstrict-X -mtiny-stack -mfract-convert-truncate -mshort-calls -nodevicelib -nodevicespecs -Waddr-space-convert -Wmisspelled-isr Blackfin Options -mcpu=cpu[-sirevision] -msim -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -mno-omit-leaf-frame-pointer -mspecld-anomaly -mno-specld-anomaly -mcsync-anomaly -mno-csync-anomaly -mlow-64k -mno-low64k -mstack-check-l1 -mid-shared-library -mno-id-shared-library -mshared-library-id=n -mleaf-id-shared-library -mno-leaf-id-shared-library -msep-data -mno-sep-data -mlong-calls -mno-long-calls -mfast-fp -minline-plt -mmulticore -mcorea -mcoreb -msdram -micplb C6X Options -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -march=cpu -msim -msdata=sdata-type CRIS Options -mcpu=cpu -march=cpu -mtune=cpu -mmax-stack-frame=n -melinux-stacksize=n -metrax4 -metrax100 -mpdebug -mcc-init -mno-side-effects -mstack-align -mdata-align -mconst-align -m32-bit -m16-bit -m8-bit -mno-prologue-epilogue -mno-gotplt -melf -maout -melinux -mlinux -sim -sim2 -mmul-bug-workaround -mno-mul-bug-workaround CR16 Options -mmac -mcr16cplus -mcr16c -msim -mint32 -mbit-ops -mdata-model=model C-SKY Options -march=arch -mcpu=cpu -mbig-endian -EB -mlittle-endian -EL -mhard-float -msoft-float -mfpu=fpu -mdouble-float -mfdivdu -melrw -mistack -mmp -mcp -mcache -msecurity -mtrust -mdsp -medsp -mvdsp -mdiv -msmart -mhigh-registers -manchor -mpushpop -mmultiple-stld -mconstpool -mstack-size -mccrt -mbranch-cost=n -mcse-cc -msched-prolog 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 -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 -mkernel -mone-byte-bool DEC Alpha Options -mno-fp-regs -msoft-float -mieee -mieee-with-inexact -mieee-conformant -mfp-trap-mode=mode -mfp-rounding-mode=mode -mtrap-precision=mode -mbuild-constants -mcpu=cpu-type -mtune=cpu-type -mbwx -mmax -mfix -mcix -mfloat-vax -mfloat-ieee -mexplicit-relocs -msmall-data -mlarge-data -msmall-text -mlarge-text -mmemory-latency=time FR30 Options -msmall-model -mno-lsim FT32 Options -msim -mlra -mnodiv -mft32b -mcompress -mnopm FRV Options -mgpr-32 -mgpr-64 -mfpr-32 -mfpr-64 -mhard-float -msoft-float -malloc-cc -mfixed-cc -mdword -mno-dword -mdouble -mno-double -mmedia -mno-media -mmuladd -mno-muladd -mfdpic -minline-plt -mgprel-ro -multilib-library-pic -mlinked-fp -mlong-calls -malign-labels -mlibrary-pic -macc-4 -macc-8 -mpack -mno-pack -mno-eflags -mcond-move -mno-cond-move -moptimize-membar -mno-optimize-membar -mscc -mno-scc -mcond-exec -mno-cond-exec -mvliw-branch -mno-vliw-branch -mmulti-cond-exec -mno-multi-cond-exec -mnested-cond-exec -mno-nested-cond-exec -mtomcat-stats -mTLS -mtls -mcpu=cpu GNU/Linux Options -mglibc -muclibc -mmusl -mbionic -mandroid -tno-android-cc -tno-android-ld H8/300 Options -mrelax -mh -ms -mn -mexr -mno-exr -mint32 -malign-300 HPPA Options -march=architecture-type -mcaller-copies -mdisable-fpregs -mdisable-indexing -mfast-indirect-calls -mgas -mgnu-ld -mhp-ld -mfixed-range=register-range -mjump-in-delay -mlinker-opt -mlong-calls -mlong-load-store -mno-disable-fpregs -mno-disable-indexing -mno-fast-indirect-calls -mno-gas -mno-jump-in-delay -mno-long-load-store -mno-portable-runtime -mno-soft-float -mno-space-regs -msoft-float -mpa-risc-1-0 -mpa-risc-1-1 -mpa-risc-2-0 -mportable-runtime -mschedule=cpu-type -mspace-regs -msio -mwsio -munix=unix-std -nolibdld -static -threads IA-64 Options -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -mgnu-as -mgnu-ld -mno-pic -mvolatile-asm-stop -mregister-names -msdata -mno-sdata -mconstant-gp -mauto-pic -mfused-madd -minline-float-divide-min-latency -minline-float-divide-max-throughput -mno-inline-float-divide -minline-int-divide-min-latency -minline-int-divide-max-throughput -mno-inline-int-divide -minline-sqrt-min-latency -minline-sqrt-max-throughput -mno-inline-sqrt -mdwarf2-asm -mearly-stop-bits -mfixed-range=register-range -mtls-size=tls-size -mtune=cpu-type -milp32 -mlp64 -msched-br-data-spec -msched-ar-data-spec -msched-control-spec -msched-br-in-data-spec -msched-ar-in-data-spec -msched-in-control-spec -msched-spec-ldc -msched-spec-control-ldc -msched-prefer-non-data-spec-insns -msched-prefer-non-control-spec-insns -msched-stop-bits-after-every-cycle -msched-count-spec-in-critical-path -msel-sched-dont-check-control-spec -msched-fp-mem-deps-zero-cost -msched-max-memory-insns-hard-limit -msched-max-memory-insns=max-insns LM32 Options -mbarrel-shift-enabled -mdivide-enabled -mmultiply-enabled -msign-extend-enabled -muser-enabled M32R/D Options -m32r2 -m32rx -m32r -mdebug -malign-loops -mno-align-loops -missue-rate=number -mbranch-cost=number -mmodel=code-size-model-type -msdata=sdata-type -mno-flush-func -mflush-func=name -mno-flush-trap -mflush-trap=number -G num M32C Options -mcpu=cpu -msim -memregs=number M680x0 Options -march=arch -mcpu=cpu -mtune=tune -m68000 -m68020 -m68020-40 -m68020-60 -m68030 -m68040 -m68060 -mcpu32 -m5200 -m5206e -m528x -m5307 -m5407 -mcfv4e -mbitfield -mno-bitfield -mc68000 -mc68020 -mnobitfield -mrtd -mno-rtd -mdiv -mno-div -mshort -mno-short -mhard-float -m68881 -msoft-float -mpcrel -malign-int -mstrict-align -msep-data -mno-sep-data -mshared-library-id=n -mid-shared-library -mno-id-shared-library -mxgot -mno-xgot -mlong-jump-table-offsets MCore Options -mhardlit -mno-hardlit -mdiv -mno-div -mrelax-immediates -mno-relax-immediates -mwide-bitfields -mno-wide-bitfields -m4byte-functions -mno-4byte-functions -mcallgraph-data -mno-callgraph-data -mslow-bytes -mno-slow-bytes -mno-lsim -mlittle-endian -mbig-endian -m210 -m340 -mstack-increment MeP Options -mabsdiff -mall-opts -maverage -mbased=n -mbitops -mc=n -mclip -mconfig=name -mcop -mcop32 -mcop64 -mivc2 -mdc -mdiv -meb -mel -mio-volatile -ml -mleadz -mm -mminmax -mmult -mno-opts -mrepeat -ms -msatur -msdram -msim -msimnovec -mtf -mtiny=n MicroBlaze Options -msoft-float -mhard-float -msmall-divides -mcpu=cpu -mmemcpy -mxl-soft-mul -mxl-soft-div -mxl-barrel-shift -mxl-pattern-compare -mxl-stack-check -mxl-gp-opt -mno-clearbss -mxl-multiply-high -mxl-float-convert -mxl-float-sqrt -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -mxl-reorder -mxl-mode-app-model -mpic-data-is-text-relative MIPS Options -EL -EB -march=arch -mtune=arch -mips1 -mips2 -mips3 -mips4 -mips32 -mips32r2 -mips32r3 -mips32r5 -mips32r6 -mips64 -mips64r2 -mips64r3 -mips64r5 -mips64r6 -mips16 -mno-mips16 -mflip-mips16 -minterlink-compressed -mno-interlink-compressed -minterlink-mips16 -mno-interlink-mips16 -mabi=abi -mabicalls -mno-abicalls -mshared -mno-shared -mplt -mno-plt -mxgot -mno-xgot -mgp32 -mgp64 -mfp32 -mfpxx -mfp64 -mhard-float -msoft-float -mno-float -msingle-float -mdouble-float -modd-spreg -mno-odd-spreg -mabs=mode -mnan=encoding -mdsp -mno-dsp -mdspr2 -mno-dspr2 -mmcu -mmno-mcu -meva -mno-eva -mvirt -mno-virt -mxpa -mno-xpa -mcrc -mno-crc -mginv -mno-ginv -mmicromips -mno-micromips -mmsa -mno-msa -mloongson-mmi -mno-loongson-mmi -mloongson-ext -mno-loongson-ext -mloongson-ext2 -mno-loongson-ext2 -mfpu=fpu-type -msmartmips -mno-smartmips -mpaired-single -mno-paired-single -mdmx -mno-mdmx -mips3d -mno-mips3d -mmt -mno-mt -mllsc -mno-llsc -mlong64 -mlong32 -msym32 -mno-sym32 -Gnum -mlocal-sdata -mno-local-sdata -mextern-sdata -mno-extern-sdata -mgpopt -mno-gopt -membedded-data -mno-embedded-data -muninit-const-in-rodata -mno-uninit-const-in-rodata -mcode-readable=setting -msplit-addresses -mno-split-addresses -mexplicit-relocs -mno-explicit-relocs -mcheck-zero-division -mno-check-zero-division -mdivide-traps -mdivide-breaks -mload-store-pairs -mno-load-store-pairs -mmemcpy -mno-memcpy -mlong-calls -mno-long-calls -mmad -mno-mad -mimadd -mno-imadd -mfused-madd -mno-fused-madd -nocpp -mfix-24k -mno-fix-24k -mfix-r4000 -mno-fix-r4000 -mfix-r4400 -mno-fix-r4400 -mfix-r5900 -mno-fix-r5900 -mfix-r10000 -mno-fix-r10000 -mfix-rm7000 -mno-fix-rm7000 -mfix-vr4120 -mno-fix-vr4120 -mfix-vr4130 -mno-fix-vr4130 -mfix-sb1 -mno-fix-sb1 -mflush-func=func -mno-flush-func -mbranch-cost=num -mbranch-likely -mno-branch-likely -mcompact-branches=policy -mfp-exceptions -mno-fp-exceptions -mvr4130-align -mno-vr4130-align -msynci -mno-synci -mlxc1-sxc1 -mno-lxc1-sxc1 -mmadd4 -mno-madd4 -mrelax-pic-calls -mno-relax-pic-calls -mmcount-ra-address -mframe-header-opt -mno-frame-header-opt MMIX Options -mlibfuncs -mno-libfuncs -mepsilon -mno-epsilon -mabi=gnu -mabi=mmixware -mzero-extend -mknuthdiv -mtoplevel-symbols -melf -mbranch-predict -mno-branch-predict -mbase-addresses -mno-base-addresses -msingle-exit -mno-single-exit MN10300 Options -mmult-bug -mno-mult-bug -mno-am33 -mam33 -mam33-2 -mam34 -mtune=cpu-type -mreturn-pointer-on-d0 -mno-crt0 -mrelax -mliw -msetlb Moxie Options -meb -mel -mmul.x -mno-crt0 MSP430 Options -msim -masm-hex -mmcu= -mcpu= -mlarge -msmall -mrelax -mwarn-mcu -mcode-region= -mdata-region= -msilicon-errata= -msilicon-errata-warn= -mhwmult= -minrt NDS32 Options -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -mreduced-regs -mfull-regs -mcmov -mno-cmov -mext-perf -mno-ext-perf -mext-perf2 -mno-ext-perf2 -mext-string -mno-ext-string -mv3push -mno-v3push -m16bit -mno-16bit -misr-vector-size=num -mcache-block-size=num -march=arch -mcmodel=code-model -mctor-dtor -mrelax Nios II Options -G num -mgpopt=option -mgpopt -mno-gpopt -mgprel-sec=regexp -mr0rel-sec=regexp -mel -meb -mno-bypass-cache -mbypass-cache -mno-cache-volatile -mcache-volatile -mno-fast-sw-div -mfast-sw-div -mhw-mul -mno-hw-mul -mhw-mulx -mno-hw-mulx -mno-hw-div -mhw-div -mcustom-insn=N -mno-custom-insn -mcustom-fpu-cfg=name -mhal -msmallc -msys-crt0=name -msys-lib=name -march=arch -mbmx -mno-bmx -mcdx -mno-cdx Nvidia PTX Options -m32 -m64 -mmainkernel -moptimize OpenRISC Options -mboard=name -mnewlib -mhard-mul -mhard-div -msoft-mul -msoft-div -mcmov -mror -msext -msfimm -mshftimm PDP-11 Options -mfpu -msoft-float -mac0 -mno-ac0 -m40 -m45 -m10 -mint32 -mno-int16 -mint16 -mno-int32 -msplit -munix-asm -mdec-asm -mgnu-asm -mlra picoChip Options -mae=ae_type -mvliw-lookahead=N -msymbol-as-address -mno-inefficient-warnings PowerPC Options See RS/6000 and PowerPC Options. RISC-V Options -mbranch-cost=N-instruction -mplt -mno-plt -mabi=ABI-string -mfdiv -mno-fdiv -mdiv -mno-div -march=ISA-string -mtune=processor-string -mpreferred-stack-boundary=num -msmall-data-limit=N-bytes -msave-restore -mno-save-restore -mstrict-align -mno-strict-align -mcmodel=medlow -mcmodel=medany -mexplicit-relocs -mno-explicit-relocs -mrelax -mno-relax -mriscv-attribute -mmo-riscv-attribute RL78 Options -msim -mmul=none -mmul=g13 -mmul=g14 -mallregs -mcpu=g10 -mcpu=g13 -mcpu=g14 -mg10 -mg13 -mg14 -m64bit-doubles -m32bit-doubles -msave-mduc-in-interrupts RS/6000 and PowerPC Options -mcpu=cpu-type -mtune=cpu-type -mcmodel=code-model -mpowerpc64 -maltivec -mno-altivec -mpowerpc-gpopt -mno-powerpc-gpopt -mpowerpc-gfxopt -mno-powerpc-gfxopt -mmfcrf -mno-mfcrf -mpopcntb -mno-popcntb -mpopcntd -mno-popcntd -mfprnd -mno-fprnd -mcmpb -mno-cmpb -mmfpgpr -mno-mfpgpr -mhard-dfp -mno-hard-dfp -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 -mupdate -mno-update -mavoid-indexed-addresses -mno-avoid-indexed-addresses -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 -mswdiv -msingle-pic-base -mprioritize-restricted-insns=priority -msched-costly-dep=dependence_type -minsert-sched-nops=scheme -mcall-aixdesc -mcall-eabi -mcall-freebsd -mcall-linux -mcall-netbsd -mcall-openbsd -mcall-sysv -mcall-sysv-eabi -mcall-sysv-noeabi -mtraceback=traceback_type -maix-struct-return -msvr4-struct-return -mabi=abi-type -msecure-plt -mbss-plt -mlongcall -mno-longcall -mpltseq -mno-pltseq -mblock-move-inline-limit=num -mblock-compare-inline-limit=num -mblock-compare-inline-loop-limit=num -mstring-compare-inline-limit=num -misel -mno-isel -mvrsave -mno-vrsave -mmulhw -mno-mulhw -mdlmzb -mno-dlmzb -mprototype -mno-prototype -msim -mmvme -mads -myellowknife -memb -msdata -msdata=opt -mreadonly-in-sdata -mvxworks -G num -mrecip -mrecip=opt -mno-recip -mrecip-precision -mno-recip-precision -mveclibabi=type -mfriz -mno-friz -mpointers-to-nested-functions -mno-pointers-to-nested-functions -msave-toc-indirect -mno-save-toc-indirect -mpower8-fusion -mno-mpower8-fusion -mpower8-vector -mno-power8-vector -mcrypto -mno-crypto -mhtm -mno-htm -mquad-memory -mno-quad-memory -mquad-memory-atomic -mno-quad-memory-atomic -mcompat-align-parm -mno-compat-align-parm -mfloat128 -mno-float128 -mfloat128-hardware -mno-float128-hardware -mgnu-attribute -mno-gnu-attribute -mstack-protector-guard=guard -mstack-protector-guard-reg=reg -mstack-protector-guard-offset=offset RX Options -m64bit-doubles -m32bit-doubles -fpu -nofpu -mcpu= -mbig-endian-data -mlittle-endian-data -msmall-data -msim -mno-sim -mas100-syntax -mno-as100-syntax -mrelax -mmax-constant-size= -mint-register= -mpid -mallow-string-insns -mno-allow-string-insns -mjsr -mno-warn-multiple-fast-interrupts -msave-acc-in-interrupts S/390 and zSeries Options -mtune=cpu-type -march=cpu-type -mhard-float -msoft-float -mhard-dfp -mno-hard-dfp -mlong-double-64 -mlong-double-128 -mbackchain -mno-backchain -mpacked-stack -mno-packed-stack -msmall-exec -mno-small-exec -mmvcle -mno-mvcle -m64 -m31 -mdebug -mno-debug -mesa -mzarch -mhtm -mvx -mzvector -mtpf-trace -mno-tpf-trace -mfused-madd -mno-fused-madd -mwarn-framesize -mwarn-dynamicstack -mstack-size -mstack-guard -mhotpatch=halfwords,halfwords Score Options -meb -mel -mnhwloop -muls -mmac -mscore5 -mscore5u -mscore7 -mscore7d SH Options -m1 -m2 -m2e -m2a-nofpu -m2a-single-only -m2a-single -m2a -m3 -m3e -m4-nofpu -m4-single-only -m4-single -m4 -m4a-nofpu -m4a-single-only -m4a-single -m4a -m4al -mb -ml -mdalign -mrelax -mbigtable -mfmovd -mrenesas -mno-renesas -mnomacsave -mieee -mno-ieee -mbitops -misize -minline-ic_invalidate -mpadstruct -mprefergot -musermode -multcost=number -mdiv=strategy -mdivsi3_libfunc=name -mfixed-range=register-range -maccumulate-outgoing-args -matomic-model=atomic-model -mbranch-cost=num -mzdcbranch -mno-zdcbranch -mcbranch-force-delay-slot -mfused-madd -mno-fused-madd -mfsca -mno-fsca -mfsrra -mno-fsrra -mpretend-cmove -mtas Solaris 2 Options -mclear-hwcap -mno-clear-hwcap -mimpure-text -mno-impure-text -pthreads SPARC Options -mcpu=cpu-type -mtune=cpu-type -mcmodel=code-model -mmemory-model=mem-model -m32 -m64 -mapp-regs -mno-app-regs -mfaster-structs -mno-faster-structs -mflat -mno-flat -mfpu -mno-fpu -mhard-float -msoft-float -mhard-quad-float -msoft-quad-float -mstack-bias -mno-stack-bias -mstd-struct-return -mno-std-struct-return -munaligned-doubles -mno-unaligned-doubles -muser-mode -mno-user-mode -mv8plus -mno-v8plus -mvis -mno-vis -mvis2 -mno-vis2 -mvis3 -mno-vis3 -mvis4 -mno-vis4 -mvis4b -mno-vis4b -mcbcond -mno-cbcond -mfmaf -mno-fmaf -mfsmuld -mno-fsmuld -mpopc -mno-popc -msubxc -mno-subxc -mfix-at697f -mfix-ut699 -mfix-ut700 -mfix-gr712rc -mlra -mno-lra SPU Options -mwarn-reloc -merror-reloc -msafe-dma -munsafe-dma -mbranch-hints -msmall-mem -mlarge-mem -mstdmain -mfixed-range=register-range -mea32 -mea64 -maddress-space-conversion -mno-address-space-conversion -mcache-size=cache-size -matomic-updates -mno-atomic-updates System V Options -Qy -Qn -YP,paths -Ym,dir TILE-Gx Options -mcpu=CPU -m32 -m64 -mbig-endian -mlittle-endian -mcmodel=code-model TILEPro Options -mcpu=cpu -m32 V850 Options -mlong-calls -mno-long-calls -mep -mno-ep -mprolog-function -mno-prolog-function -mspace -mtda=n -msda=n -mzda=n -mapp-regs -mno-app-regs -mdisable-callt -mno-disable-callt -mv850e2v3 -mv850e2 -mv850e1 -mv850es -mv850e -mv850 -mv850e3v5 -mloop -mrelax -mlong-jumps -msoft-float -mhard-float -mgcc-abi -mrh850-abi -mbig-switch VAX Options -mg -mgnu -munix Visium Options -mdebug -msim -mfpu -mno-fpu -mhard-float -msoft-float -mcpu=cpu-type -mtune=cpu-type -msv-mode -muser-mode VMS Options -mvms-return-codes -mdebug-main=prefix -mmalloc64 -mpointer-size=size VxWorks Options -mrtp -non-static -Bstatic -Bdynamic -Xbind-lazy -Xbind-now x86 Options -mtune=cpu-type -march=cpu-type -mtune-ctrl=feature-list -mdump-tune-features -mno-default -mfpmath=unit -masm=dialect -mno-fancy-math-387 -mno-fp-ret-in-387 -m80387 -mhard-float -msoft-float -mno-wide-multiply -mrtd -malign-double -mpreferred-stack-boundary=num -mincoming-stack-boundary=num -mcld -mcx16 -msahf -mmovbe -mcrc32 -mrecip -mrecip=opt -mvzeroupper -mprefer-avx128 -mprefer-vector-width=opt -mmmx -msse -msse2 -msse3 -mssse3 -msse4.1 -msse4.2 -msse4 -mavx -mavx2 -mavx512f -mavx512pf -mavx512er -mavx512cd -mavx512vl -mavx512bw -mavx512dq -mavx512ifma -mavx512vbmi -msha -maes -mpclmul -mfsgsbase -mrdrnd -mf16c -mfma -mpconfig -mwbnoinvd -mptwrite -mprefetchwt1 -mclflushopt -mclwb -mxsavec -mxsaves -msse4a -m3dnow -m3dnowa -mpopcnt -mabm -mbmi -mtbm -mfma4 -mxop -madx -mlzcnt -mbmi2 -mfxsr -mxsave -mxsaveopt -mrtm -mhle -mlwp -mmwaitx -mclzero -mpku -mthreads -mgfni -mvaes -mwaitpkg -mshstk -mmanual-endbr -mforce-indirect-call -mavx512vbmi2 -mvpclmulqdq -mavx512bitalg -mmovdiri -mmovdir64b -mavx512vpopcntdq -mavx5124fmaps -mavx512vnni -mavx5124vnniw -mprfchw -mrdpid -mrdseed -msgx -mcldemote -mms-bitfields -mno-align-stringops -minline-all-stringops -minline-stringops-dynamically -mstringop-strategy=alg -mmemcpy-strategy=strategy -mmemset-strategy=strategy -mpush-args -maccumulate-outgoing-args -m128bit-long-double -m96bit-long-double -mlong-double-64 -mlong-double-80 -mlong-double-128 -mregparm=num -msseregparm -mveclibabi=type -mvect8-ret-in-mem -mpc32 -mpc64 -mpc80 -mstackrealign -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -mno-red-zone -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs -mcmodel=code-model -mabi=name -maddress-mode=mode -m32 -m64 -mx32 -m16 -miamcu -mlarge-data-threshold=num -msse2avx -mfentry -mrecord-mcount -mnop-mcount -m8bit-idiv -minstrument-return=type -mfentry-name=name -mfentry-section=name -mavx256-split-unaligned-load -mavx256-split-unaligned-store -malign-data=type -mstack-protector-guard=guard -mstack-protector-guard-reg=reg -mstack-protector-guard-offset=offset -mstack-protector-guard-symbol=symbol -mgeneral-regs-only -mcall-ms2sysv-xlogues -mindirect-branch=choice -mfunction-return=choice -mindirect-branch-register x86 Windows Options -mconsole -mcygwin -mno-cygwin -mdll -mnop-fun-dllimport -mthread -municode -mwin32 -mwindows -fno-set-stack-executable Xstormy16 Options -msim Xtensa Options -mconst16 -mno-const16 -mfused-madd -mno-fused-madd -mforce-no-pic -mserialize-volatile -mno-serialize-volatile -mtext-section-literals -mno-text-section-literals -mauto-litpools -mno-auto-litpools -mtarget-align -mno-target-align -mlongcalls -mno-longcalls zSeries Options See S/390 and zSeries Options. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Invoking G++ Link: prev: Option Summary Next: Invoking G++, Previous: Option Summary, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.2 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 that must be preprocessed. file.i C source code that should not be preprocessed. file.ii C++ source code that 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 that 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 that should not be preprocessed. file.h C, C++, Objective-C or Objective-C++ header file to be turned into a precompiled header (default), or C, C++ header file to be turned into an Ada spec (via the -fdump-ada-spec switch). file.cc file.cp file.cxx file.cpp file.CPP file.c++ file.C C++ source code that 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.mm file.M Objective-C++ source code that must be preprocessed. file.mii Objective-C++ source code that should not be preprocessed. file.hh file.H file.hp file.hxx file.hpp file.HPP file.h++ file.tcc C++ header file to be turned into a precompiled header or Ada spec. file.f file.for file.ftn Fixed form Fortran source code that should not be preprocessed. file.F file.FOR file.fpp file.FPP file.FTN Fixed form Fortran source code that must be preprocessed (with the traditional preprocessor). file.f90 file.f95 file.f03 file.f08 Free form Fortran source code that should not be preprocessed. file.F90 file.F95 file.F03 file.F08 Free form Fortran source code that must be preprocessed (with the traditional preprocessor). file.go Go source code. file.brig BRIG files (binary representation of HSAIL). file.d D source code. file.di D interface file. file.dd D documentation code (Ddoc). file.ads Ada source code file that 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. file.S file.sx Assembler code that 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 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 d f77 f77-cpp-input f95 f95-cpp-input go brig -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). 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 that don't require preprocessing are ignored. -o file Place output in file file. This applies 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 arguments are quoted unless they contain only alphanumeric characters or ./-_. This is useful for shell scripts to capture the driver-generated command lines. --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 is also passed on to the various processes invoked by gcc, so that they can display the command-line options they accept. If the -Wextra option has also been specified (prior to the --help option), then command-line options that have no documentation associated with them are also displayed. --target-help Print (on the standard output) a description of target-specific command-line options for each tool. For some targets extra target-specific information may also be printed. --help={class|[^]qualifier}[,…] Print (on the standard output) a description of the command-line options understood by the compiler that fit into all specified classes and qualifiers. These are the supported classes: 'optimizers' Display all of the optimization options supported by the compiler. 'warnings' Display all of the options controlling warning messages produced by the compiler. 'target' Display target-specific options. Unlike the --target-help option however, target-specific options of the linker and assembler are not displayed. This is because those tools do not currently support the extended --help= syntax. 'params' Display the values recognized by the --param option. language Display the options supported for language, where language is the name of one of the languages supported in this version of GCC. 'common' Display the options that are common to all languages. These are the supported qualifiers: 'undocumented' Display only those options that are undocumented. 'joined' Display options taking an argument that appears after an equal sign in the same continuous piece of text, such as: '--help=target'. 'separate' Display options taking an argument that appears as a separate word following the original option, such as: '-o output-file'. Thus for example to display all the undocumented target-specific switches supported by the compiler, use: --help=target,undocumented The sense of a qualifier can be inverted by prefixing it with the '^' character, so for example to display all binary warning options (i.e., ones that are either on or off and that do not take an argument) that have a description, use: --help=warnings,^joined,^undocumented The argument to --help= should not consist solely of inverted qualifiers. Combining several classes is possible, although this usually restricts the output so much that there is nothing to display. One case where it does work, however, is when one of the classes is target. For example, to display all the target-specific optimization options, use: --help=target,optimizers The --help= option can be repeated on the command line. Each successive use displays its requested class of options, skipping those that have already been displayed. If --help is also specified anywhere on the command line then this takes precedence over any --help= option. If the -Q option appears on the command line before the --help= option, then the descriptive text displayed by --help= is changed. Instead of describing the displayed options, an indication is given as to whether the option is enabled, disabled or set to a specific value (assuming that the compiler knows this at the point where the --help= option is used). Here is a truncated example from the ARM port of gcc: % gcc -Q -mabi=2 --help=target -c The following options are target specific: -mabi= 2 -mabort-on-noreturn [disabled] -mapcs [disabled] The output is sensitive to the effects of previous command-line options, so for example it is possible to find out which optimizations are enabled at -O2 by using: -Q -O2 --help=optimizers Alternatively you can discover which binary optimizations are enabled by -O3 by using: gcc -c -Q -O3 --help=optimizers > /tmp/O3-opts gcc -c -Q -O2 --help=optimizers > /tmp/O2-opts diff /tmp/O2-opts /tmp/O3-opts | grep enabled --version Display the version number and copyrights of the invoked GCC. -pass-exit-codes Normally the gcc program exits 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 instead returns with the numerically highest error produced by any phase returning an error indication. The C, C++, and Fortran front ends return 4 if an internal compiler error is encountered. -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. -specs=file Process file after the compiler reads in the standard specs file, in order to override the defaults which 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. See Spec Files, for information about the format of the file. -wrapper Invoke all subcommands under a wrapper program. The name of the wrapper program and its parameters are passed as a comma separated list. gcc -c t.c -wrapper gdb,--args This invokes all subprograms of gcc under 'gdb --args', thus the invocation of cc1 is 'gdb --args cc1 …'. -ffile-prefix-map=old=new When compiling files residing in directory old, record any references to them in the result of the compilation as if the files resided in directory new instead. Specifying this option is equivalent to specifying all the individual -f*-prefix-map options. This can be used to make reproducible builds that are location independent. See also -fmacro-prefix-map and -fdebug-prefix-map. -fplugin=name.so Load the plugin code in file name.so, assumed to be a shared object to be dlopen'd by the compiler. The base name of the shared object file is used to identify the plugin for the purposes of argument parsing (See -fplugin-arg-name-key=value below). Each plugin should define the callback functions specified in the Plugins API. -fplugin-arg-name-key=value Define an argument called key with a value of value for the plugin called name. -fdump-ada-spec[-slim] For C and C++ source and include files, generate corresponding Ada specs. See Generating Ada Bindings for C and C++ headers in GNAT User's Guide, which provides detailed documentation on this feature. -fada-spec-parent=unit In conjunction with -fdump-ada-spec[-slim] above, generate Ada specs as child units of parent unit. -fdump-go-spec=file For input files in any language, generate corresponding Go declarations in file. This generates Go const, type, var, and func declarations which may be a useful way to start writing a Go interface to code written in some other language. @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. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Invoking G++, Previous: Option Summary, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: C Dialect Options Link: prev: Overall Options Next: C Dialect Options, Previous: Overall Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.3 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', '.hpp', '.H', or (for shared template code) '.tcc'; 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 automatically specifies linking against the C++ library. It treats '.c', '.h' and '.i' files as C++ source files instead of C source files unless -x is used. 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. See Options Controlling C Dialect, for explanations of options for languages related to C. See Options Controlling C++ Dialect, for explanations of options that are meaningful only for C++ programs. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: C++ Dialect Options Link: prev: Invoking G++ Next: C++ Dialect Options, Previous: Invoking G++, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.4 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, this is equivalent to -std=c90. In C++ mode, it is equivalent to -std=c++98. 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, -Wpedantic is required in addition to -ansi. See Warning Options. 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 that are normally built in but do not have semantics defined by ISO C (such as alloca and ffs) are not built-in functions when -ansi is used. See Other built-in functions provided by GCC, for details of the functions affected. -std= Determine the language standard. See Language Standards Supported by GCC, for details of these standard versions. This option is currently only supported when compiling C or C++. The compiler can accept several base standards, such as 'c90' or 'c++98', and GNU dialects of those standards, such as 'gnu90' or 'gnu++98'. When a base standard is specified, the compiler accepts all programs following that standard plus those using GNU extensions that do not contradict it. For example, -std=c90 turns off certain features of GCC that are incompatible with ISO C90, such as the asm and typeof keywords, but not other GNU extensions that do not have a meaning in ISO C90, such as omitting the middle term of a ?: expression. On the other hand, when a GNU dialect of a standard is specified, all features supported by the compiler are enabled, even when those features change the meaning of the base standard. As a result, some strict-conforming programs may be rejected. The particular standard is used by -Wpedantic to identify which features are GNU extensions given that version of the standard. For example -std=gnu90 -Wpedantic warns about C++ style '//' comments, while -std=gnu99 -Wpedantic does not. A value for this option must be provided; possible values are 'c90' 'c89' 'iso9899:1990' Support all ISO C90 programs (certain GNU extensions that conflict with ISO C90 are disabled). Same as -ansi for C code. 'iso9899:199409' ISO C90 as modified in amendment 1. 'c99' 'c9x' 'iso9899:1999' 'iso9899:199x' ISO C99. This standard is substantially completely supported, modulo bugs and floating-point issues (mainly but not entirely relating to optional C99 features from Annexes F and G). See http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html for more information. The names 'c9x' and 'iso9899:199x' are deprecated. 'c11' 'c1x' 'iso9899:2011' ISO C11, the 2011 revision of the ISO C standard. This standard is substantially completely supported, modulo bugs, floating-point issues (mainly but not entirely relating to optional C11 features from Annexes F and G) and the optional Annexes K (Bounds-checking interfaces) and L (Analyzability). The name 'c1x' is deprecated. 'c17' 'c18' 'iso9899:2017' 'iso9899:2018' ISO C17, the 2017 revision of the ISO C standard (published in 2018). This standard is same as C11 except for corrections of defects (all of which are also applied with -std=c11) and a new value of __STDC_VERSION__, and so is supported to the same extent as C11. 'c2x' The next version of the ISO C standard, still under development. The support for this version is experimental and incomplete. 'gnu90' 'gnu89' GNU dialect of ISO C90 (including some C99 features). 'gnu99' 'gnu9x' GNU dialect of ISO C99. The name 'gnu9x' is deprecated. 'gnu11' 'gnu1x' GNU dialect of ISO C11. The name 'gnu1x' is deprecated. 'gnu17' 'gnu18' GNU dialect of ISO C17. This is the default for C code. 'gnu2x' The next version of the ISO C standard, still under development, plus GNU extensions. The support for this version is experimental and incomplete. 'c++98' 'c++03' The 1998 ISO C++ standard plus the 2003 technical corrigendum and some additional defect reports. Same as -ansi for C++ code. 'gnu++98' 'gnu++03' GNU dialect of -std=c++98. 'c++11' 'c++0x' The 2011 ISO C++ standard plus amendments. The name 'c++0x' is deprecated. 'gnu++11' 'gnu++0x' GNU dialect of -std=c++11. The name 'gnu++0x' is deprecated. 'c++14' 'c++1y' The 2014 ISO C++ standard plus amendments. The name 'c++1y' is deprecated. 'gnu++14' 'gnu++1y' GNU dialect of -std=c++14. This is the default for C++ code. The name 'gnu++1y' is deprecated. 'c++17' 'c++1z' The 2017 ISO C++ standard plus amendments. The name 'c++1z' is deprecated. 'gnu++17' 'gnu++1z' GNU dialect of -std=c++17. The name 'gnu++1z' is deprecated. 'c++2a' The next revision of the ISO C++ standard, tentatively planned for 2020. Support is highly experimental, and will almost certainly change in incompatible ways in future releases. 'gnu++2a' GNU dialect of -std=c++2a. Support is highly experimental, and will almost certainly change in incompatible ways in future releases. -fgnu89-inline The option -fgnu89-inline tells GCC to use the traditional GNU semantics for inline functions when in C99 mode. See An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro. Using this option is roughly equivalent to adding the gnu_inline function attribute to all inline functions (see Function Attributes). The option -fno-gnu89-inline explicitly tells GCC to use the C99 semantics for inline when in C99 or gnu99 mode (i.e., it specifies the default behavior). This option is not supported in -std=c90 or -std=gnu90 mode. The preprocessor macros __GNUC_GNU_INLINE__ and __GNUC_STDC_INLINE__ may be used to check which semantics are in effect for inline functions. See Common Predefined Macros in The C Preprocessor. -fpermitted-flt-eval-methods=style ISO/IEC TS 18661-3 defines new permissible values for FLT_EVAL_METHOD that indicate that operations and constants with a semantic type that is an interchange or extended format should be evaluated to the precision and range of that type. These new values are a superset of those permitted under C99/C11, which does not specify the meaning of other positive values of FLT_EVAL_METHOD. As such, code conforming to C11 may not have been written expecting the possibility of the new values. -fpermitted-flt-eval-methods specifies whether the compiler should allow only the values of FLT_EVAL_METHOD specified in C99/C11, or the extended set of values specified in ISO/IEC TS 18661-3. style is either c11 or ts-18661-3 as appropriate. The default when in a standards compliant mode (-std=c11 or similar) is -fpermitted-flt-eval-methods=c11. The default when in a GNU dialect (-std=gnu11 or similar) is -fpermitted-flt-eval-methods=ts-18661-3. -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. -fallow-parameterless-variadic-functions Accept variadic functions without named parameters. Although it is possible to define such a function, this is not very useful as it is not possible to read the arguments. This is only supported for C as this construct is allowed by C++. -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-builtin -fno-builtin-function Don't recognize built-in functions that do not begin with '__builtin_' as prefix. See Other built-in functions provided by GCC, for details of the functions affected, including those which are not built-in functions when -ansi or -std options for strict ISO C conformance are used because they do not have an ISO standard meaning. GCC normally generates special code to handle certain built-in functions more efficiently; for instance, calls to alloca may become single instructions which 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 that 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)) -fgimple Enable parsing of function definitions marked with __GIMPLE. This is an experimental feature that allows unit testing of GIMPLE passes. -fhosted Assert that compilation targets 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 targets 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. See Language Standards Supported by GCC, for details of freestanding and hosted environments. -fopenacc Enable handling of OpenACC directives #pragma acc in C/C++ and !$acc in Fortran. When -fopenacc is specified, the compiler generates accelerated code according to the OpenACC Application Programming Interface v2.0 https://www.openacc.org. This option implies -pthread, and thus is only supported on targets that have support for -pthread. -fopenacc-dim=geom Specify default compute dimensions for parallel offload regions that do not explicitly specify. The geom value is a triple of ':'-separated sizes, in order 'gang', 'worker' and, 'vector'. A size can be omitted, to use a target-specific default value. -fopenmp Enable handling of OpenMP directives #pragma omp in C/C++ and !$omp in Fortran. When -fopenmp is specified, the compiler generates parallel code according to the OpenMP Application Program Interface v4.5 https://www.openmp.org. This option implies -pthread, and thus is only supported on targets that have support for -pthread. -fopenmp implies -fopenmp-simd. -fopenmp-simd Enable handling of OpenMP's SIMD directives with #pragma omp in C/C++ and !$omp in Fortran. Other OpenMP directives are ignored. -fgnu-tm When the option -fgnu-tm is specified, the compiler generates code for the Linux variant of Intel's current Transactional Memory ABI specification document (Revision 1.1, May 6 2009). This is an experimental feature whose interface may change in future versions of GCC, as the official specification changes. Please note that not all architectures are supported for this feature. For more information on GCC's support for transactional memory, See The GNU Transactional Memory Library in GNU Transactional Memory Library. Note that the transactional memory feature is not supported with non-call exceptions (-fnon-call-exceptions). -fms-extensions Accept some non-standard constructs used in Microsoft header files. In C++ code, this allows member names in structures to be similar to previous types declarations. typedef int UOW; struct ABC { UOW UOW; }; Some cases of unnamed fields in structures and unions are only accepted with this option. See Unnamed struct/union fields within structs/unions, for details. Note that this option is off for all targets but x86 targets using ms-abi. -fplan9-extensions Accept some non-standard constructs used in Plan 9 code. This enables -fms-extensions, permits passing pointers to structures with anonymous fields to functions that expect pointers to elements of the type of the field, and permits referring to anonymous fields declared using a typedef. See Unnamed struct/union fields within structs/unions, for details. This is only supported for C, not C++. -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++. -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. -fsso-struct=endianness Set the default scalar storage order of structures and unions to the specified endianness. The accepted values are 'big-endian', 'little-endian' and 'native' for the native endianness of the target (the default). This option is not supported for C++. Warning: the -fsso-struct switch causes GCC to generate code that is not binary compatible with code generated without it if the specified endianness is not the native endianness of the target. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: C++ Dialect Options, Previous: Invoking G++, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options Link: prev: C Dialect Options Next: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options, Previous: C Dialect ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.5 Options Controlling C++ Dialect This section describes the command-line options that are only meaningful for C++ programs. 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 -fstrict-enums -O -c firstClass.C In this example, only -fstrict-enums is an option meant only for C++ programs; you can use the other options with any language supported by GCC. Some options for compiling C programs, such as -std, are also relevant for C++ programs. See Options Controlling C Dialect. Here is a list of options that are only for compiling C++ programs: -fabi-version=n Use version n of the C++ ABI. The default is version 0. Version 0 refers to the version conforming most closely to the C++ ABI specification. Therefore, the ABI obtained using version 0 will change in different versions of G++ as ABI bugs are fixed. Version 1 is the version of the C++ ABI that first appeared in G++ 3.2. Version 2 is the version of the C++ ABI that first appeared in G++ 3.4, and was the default through G++ 4.9. Version 3 corrects an error in mangling a constant address as a template argument. Version 4, which first appeared in G++ 4.5, implements a standard mangling for vector types. Version 5, which first appeared in G++ 4.6, corrects the mangling of attribute const/volatile on function pointer types, decltype of a plain decl, and use of a function parameter in the declaration of another parameter. Version 6, which first appeared in G++ 4.7, corrects the promotion behavior of C++11 scoped enums and the mangling of template argument packs, const/static_cast, prefix ++ and –, and a class scope function used as a template argument. Version 7, which first appeared in G++ 4.8, that treats nullptr_t as a builtin type and corrects the mangling of lambdas in default argument scope. Version 8, which first appeared in G++ 4.9, corrects the substitution behavior of function types with function-cv-qualifiers. Version 9, which first appeared in G++ 5.2, corrects the alignment of nullptr_t. Version 10, which first appeared in G++ 6.1, adds mangling of attributes that affect type identity, such as ia32 calling convention attributes (e.g. 'stdcall'). Version 11, which first appeared in G++ 7, corrects the mangling of sizeof... expressions and operator names. For multiple entities with the same name within a function, that are declared in different scopes, the mangling now changes starting with the twelfth occurrence. It also implies -fnew-inheriting-ctors. Version 12, which first appeared in G++ 8, corrects the calling conventions for empty classes on the x86_64 target and for classes with only deleted copy/move constructors. It accidentally changes the calling convention for classes with a deleted copy constructor and a trivial move constructor. Version 13, which first appeared in G++ 8.2, fixes the accidental change in version 12. See also -Wabi. -fabi-compat-version=n On targets that support strong aliases, G++ works around mangling changes by creating an alias with the correct mangled name when defining a symbol with an incorrect mangled name. This switch specifies which ABI version to use for the alias. With -fabi-version=0 (the default), this defaults to 11 (GCC 7 compatibility). If another ABI version is explicitly selected, this defaults to 0. For compatibility with GCC versions 3.2 through 4.9, use -fabi-compat-version=2. If this option is not provided but -Wabi=n is, that version is used for compatibility aliases. If this option is provided along with -Wabi (without the version), the version from this option is used for the warning. -fno-access-control Turn off all access checking. This switch is mainly useful for working around bugs in the access control code. -faligned-new Enable support for C++17 new of types that require more alignment than void* ::operator new(std::size_t) provides. A numeric argument such as -faligned-new=32 can be used to specify how much alignment (in bytes) is provided by that function, but few users will need to override the default of alignof(std::max_align_t). This flag is enabled by default for -std=c++17. -fchar8_t -fno-char8_t Enable support for char8_t as adopted for C++2a. This includes the addition of a new char8_t fundamental type, changes to the types of UTF-8 string and character literals, new signatures for user-defined literals, associated standard library updates, and new __cpp_char8_t and __cpp_lib_char8_t feature test macros. This option enables functions to be overloaded for ordinary and UTF-8 strings: int f(const char *); // #1 int f(const char8_t *); // #2 int v1 = f("text"); // Calls #1 int v2 = f(u8"text"); // Calls #2 and introduces new signatures for user-defined literals: int operator""_udl1(char8_t); int v3 = u8'x'_udl1; int operator""_udl2(const char8_t*, std::size_t); int v4 = u8"text"_udl2; template int operator""_udl3(); int v5 = u8"text"_udl3; The change to the types of UTF-8 string and character literals introduces incompatibilities with ISO C++11 and later standards. For example, the following code is well-formed under ISO C++11, but is ill-formed when -fchar8_t is specified. char ca[] = u8"xx"; // error: char-array initialized from wide // string const char *cp = u8"xx";// error: invalid conversion from // `const char8_t*' to `const char*' int f(const char*); auto v = f(u8"xx"); // error: invalid conversion from // `const char8_t*' to `const char*' std::string s{u8"xx"}; // error: no matching function for call to // `std::basic_string::basic_string()' using namespace std::literals; s = u8"xx"s; // error: conversion from // `basic_string' to non-scalar // type `basic_string' requested -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 only returns 0 if it is declared throw(), in which case the compiler always checks 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)'. -fconcepts Enable support for the C++ Extensions for Concepts Technical Specification, ISO 19217 (2015), which allows code like template concept bool Addable = requires (T t) { t + t; }; template T add (T a, T b) { return a + b; } -fconstexpr-depth=n Set the maximum nested evaluation depth for C++11 constexpr functions to n. A limit is needed to detect endless recursion during constant expression evaluation. The minimum specified by the standard is 512. -fconstexpr-loop-limit=n Set the maximum number of iterations for a loop in C++14 constexpr functions to n. A limit is needed to detect infinite loops during constant expression evaluation. The default is 262144 (1<<18). -fconstexpr-ops-limit=n Set the maximum number of operations during a single constexpr evaluation. Even when number of iterations of a single loop is limited with the above limit, if there are several nested loops and each of them has many iterations but still smaller than the above limit, or if in a body of some loop or even outside of a loop too many expressions need to be evaluated, the resulting constexpr evaluation might take too long. The default is 33554432 (1<<25). -fdeduce-init-list Enable deduction of a template type parameter as std::initializer_list from a brace-enclosed initializer list, i.e. template auto forward(T t) -> decltype (realfn (t)) { return realfn (t); } void f() { forward({1,2}); // call forward> } This deduction was implemented as a possible extension to the originally proposed semantics for the C++11 standard, but was not part of the final standard, so it is disabled by default. This option is deprecated, and may be removed in a future version of G++. -fno-elide-constructors The C++ standard allows an implementation to omit creating a temporary that 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. This option also causes G++ to call trivial member functions which otherwise would be expanded inline. In C++17, the compiler is required to omit these temporaries, but this option still affects trivial member functions. -fno-enforce-eh-specs Don't generate code to check for violation of exception specifications at run time. 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 still optimizes based on the specifications, so throwing an unexpected exception results in undefined behavior at run time. -fextern-tls-init -fno-extern-tls-init The C++11 and OpenMP standards allow thread_local and threadprivate variables to have dynamic (runtime) initialization. To support this, any use of such a variable goes through a wrapper function that performs any necessary initialization. When the use and definition of the variable are in the same translation unit, this overhead can be optimized away, but when the use is in a different translation unit there is significant overhead even if the variable doesn't actually need dynamic initialization. If the programmer can be sure that no use of the variable in a non-defining TU needs to trigger dynamic initialization (either because the variable is statically initialized, or a use of the variable in the defining TU will be executed before any uses in another TU), they can avoid this overhead with the -fno-extern-tls-init option. On targets that support symbol aliases, the default is -fextern-tls-init. On targets that do not support symbol aliases, the default is -fno-extern-tls-init. -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. This option is implied by the strict ISO C++ dialects: -ansi, -std=c++98, -std=c++11, etc. -fno-implicit-templates Never emit code for non-inline templates that are instantiated implicitly (i.e. by use); only emit code for explicit instantiations. If you use this option, you must take care to structure your code to include all the necessary explicit instantiations to avoid getting undefined symbols at link time. See Template Instantiation, for more information. -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 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 causes linker errors if these functions are not inlined everywhere they are called. -fms-extensions Disable Wpedantic warnings about constructs used in MFC, such as implicit int and getting a pointer to member function via non-standard syntax. -fnew-inheriting-ctors Enable the P0136 adjustment to the semantics of C++11 constructor inheritance. This is part of C++17 but also considered to be a Defect Report against C++11 and C++14. This flag is enabled by default unless -fabi-version=10 or lower is specified. -fnew-ttp-matching Enable the P0522 resolution to Core issue 150, template template parameters and default arguments: this allows a template with default template arguments as an argument for a template template parameter with fewer template parameters. This flag is enabled by default for -std=c++17. -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. -fnothrow-opt Treat a throw() exception specification as if it were a noexcept specification to reduce or eliminate the text size overhead relative to a function with no exception specification. If the function has local variables of types with non-trivial destructors, the exception specification actually makes the function smaller because the EH cleanups for those variables can be optimized away. The semantic effect is that an exception thrown out of a function with such an exception specification results in a call to terminate rather than unexpected. -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 allows some nonconforming code to compile. -fno-pretty-templates When an error message refers to a specialization of a function template, the compiler normally prints the signature of the template followed by the template arguments and any typedefs or typenames in the signature (e.g. void f(T) [with T = int] rather than void f(int)) so that it's clear which template is involved. When an error message refers to a specialization of a class template, the compiler omits any template arguments that match the default template arguments for that template. If either of these behaviors make it harder to understand the error message rather than easier, you can use -fno-pretty-templates to disable them. -frepo Enable automatic template instantiation at link time. This option also implies -fno-implicit-templates. See Template Instantiation, for more information. -fno-rtti Disable generation of information about every class with virtual functions for use by the C++ run-time 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 G++ generates it as needed. The dynamic_cast operator can still be used for casts that do not require run-time type information, i.e. casts to void * or to unambiguous base classes. Mixing code compiled with -frtti with that compiled with -fno-rtti may not work. For example, programs may fail to link if a class compiled with -fno-rtti is used as a base for a class compiled with -frtti. -fsized-deallocation Enable the built-in global declarations void operator delete (void *, std::size_t) noexcept; void operator delete[] (void *, std::size_t) noexcept; as introduced in C++14. This is useful for user-defined replacement deallocation functions that, for example, use the size of the object to make deallocation faster. Enabled by default under -std=c++14 and above. The flag -Wsized-deallocation warns about places that might want to add a definition. -fstrict-enums Allow the compiler to optimize using the assumption that a value of enumerated type can only be one of the values of the enumeration (as defined in the C++ standard; basically, a value that can be represented in the minimum number of bits needed to represent all the enumerators). This assumption may not be valid if the program uses a cast to convert an arbitrary integer value to the enumerated type. -fstrong-eval-order Evaluate member access, array subscripting, and shift expressions in left-to-right order, and evaluate assignment in right-to-left order, as adopted for C++17. Enabled by default with -std=c++17. -fstrong-eval-order=some enables just the ordering of member access and shift expressions, and is the default without -std=c++17. -ftemplate-backtrace-limit=n Set the maximum number of template instantiation notes for a single warning or error to n. The default value is 10. -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 (changed to 1024 in C++11). The default value is 900, as the compiler can run out of stack space before hitting 1024 in some situations. -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 only works if your C library supports __cxa_atexit. -fno-use-cxa-get-exception-ptr Don't use the __cxa_get_exception_ptr runtime routine. This causes 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 functions or methods where the addresses of the two functions are 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 behavior 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 has no effect. Explicitly instantiated inline methods are unaffected by this option as their linkage might otherwise cross a shared library boundary. See Template Instantiation. -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 that are defined in more than one shared object: those declarations are permitted if they are permitted when this option is not used. In new code it is better to use -fvisibility=hidden and export those classes that are intended to be externally visible. Unfortunately it is possible for code to rely, perhaps accidentally, on the Visual Studio 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 are different, so changing one does not change the other; and that pointers to function members defined in different shared objects may 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++ uses weak symbols if they are available. This option exists only for testing, and should not be used by end-users; it results 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: -Wabi (C, Objective-C, C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when G++ it generates code that is probably not compatible with the vendor-neutral C++ ABI. Since G++ now defaults to updating the ABI with each major release, normally -Wabi will warn only if there is a check added later in a release series for an ABI issue discovered since the initial release. -Wabi will warn about more things if an older ABI version is selected (with -fabi-version=n). -Wabi can also be used with an explicit version number to warn about compatibility with a particular -fabi-version level, e.g. -Wabi=2 to warn about changes relative to -fabi-version=2. If an explicit version number is provided and -fabi-compat-version is not specified, the version number from this option is used for compatibility aliases. If no explicit version number is provided with this option, but -fabi-compat-version is specified, that version number is used for ABI warnings. 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 is 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. Known incompatibilities in -fabi-version=2 (which was the default from GCC 3.4 to 4.9) include: * A template with a non-type template parameter of reference type was mangled incorrectly: extern int N; template struct S {}; void n (S) {2} This was fixed in -fabi-version=3. * SIMD vector types declared using __attribute ((vector_size)) were mangled in a non-standard way that does not allow for overloading of functions taking vectors of different sizes. The mangling was changed in -fabi-version=4. * __attribute ((const)) and noreturn were mangled as type qualifiers, and decltype of a plain declaration was folded away. These mangling issues were fixed in -fabi-version=5. * Scoped enumerators passed as arguments to a variadic function are promoted like unscoped enumerators, causing va_arg to complain. On most targets this does not actually affect the parameter passing ABI, as there is no way to pass an argument smaller than int. Also, the ABI changed the mangling of template argument packs, const_cast, static_cast, prefix increment/decrement, and a class scope function used as a template argument. These issues were corrected in -fabi-version=6. * Lambdas in default argument scope were mangled incorrectly, and the ABI changed the mangling of nullptr_t. These issues were corrected in -fabi-version=7. * When mangling a function type with function-cv-qualifiers, the un-qualified function type was incorrectly treated as a substitution candidate. This was fixed in -fabi-version=8, the default for GCC 5.1. * decltype(nullptr) incorrectly had an alignment of 1, leading to unaligned accesses. Note that this did not affect the ABI of a function with a nullptr_t parameter, as parameters have a minimum alignment. This was fixed in -fabi-version=9, the default for GCC 5.2. * Target-specific attributes that affect the identity of a type, such as ia32 calling conventions on a function type (stdcall, regparm, etc.), did not affect the mangled name, leading to name collisions when function pointers were used as template arguments. This was fixed in -fabi-version=10, the default for GCC 6.1. It also warns about psABI-related changes. The known psABI changes at this point include: * For SysV/x86-64, unions with long double members are passed in memory as specified in psABI. For example: union U { long double ld; int i; }; union U is always passed in memory. -Wabi-tag (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a type with an ABI tag is used in a context that does not have that ABI tag. See C++ Attributes for more information about ABI tags. -Wctor-dtor-privacy (C++ and Objective-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. Also warn if there are no non-private methods, and there's at least one private member function that isn't a constructor or destructor. -Wdelete-non-virtual-dtor (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when delete is used to destroy an instance of a class that has virtual functions and non-virtual destructor. It is unsafe to delete an instance of a derived class through a pointer to a base class if the base class does not have a virtual destructor. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wdeprecated-copy (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn that the implicit declaration of a copy constructor or copy assignment operator is deprecated if the class has a user-provided copy constructor or copy assignment operator, in C++11 and up. This warning is enabled by -Wextra. With -Wdeprecated-copy-dtor, also deprecate if the class has a user-provided destructor. -Wno-init-list-lifetime (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Do not warn about uses of std::initializer_list that are likely to result in dangling pointers. Since the underlying array for an initializer_list is handled like a normal C++ temporary object, it is easy to inadvertently keep a pointer to the array past the end of the array's lifetime. For example: * If a function returns a temporary initializer_list, or a local initializer_list variable, the array's lifetime ends at the end of the return statement, so the value returned has a dangling pointer. * If a new-expression creates an initializer_list, the array only lives until the end of the enclosing full-expression, so the initializer_list in the heap has a dangling pointer. * When an initializer_list variable is assigned from a brace-enclosed initializer list, the temporary array created for the right side of the assignment only lives until the end of the full-expression, so at the next statement the initializer_list variable has a dangling pointer. // li's initial underlying array lives as long as li std::initializer_list li = { 1,2,3 }; // assignment changes li to point to a temporary array li = { 4, 5 }; // now the temporary is gone and li has a dangling pointer int i = li.begin()[0] // undefined behavior * When a list constructor stores the begin pointer from the initializer_list argument, this doesn't extend the lifetime of the array, so if a class variable is constructed from a temporary initializer_list, the pointer is left dangling by the end of the variable declaration statement. -Wliteral-suffix (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a string or character literal is followed by a ud-suffix which does not begin with an underscore. As a conforming extension, GCC treats such suffixes as separate preprocessing tokens in order to maintain backwards compatibility with code that uses formatting macros from . For example: #define __STDC_FORMAT_MACROS #include #include int main() { int64_t i64 = 123; printf("My int64: %" PRId64"\n", i64); } In this case, PRId64 is treated as a separate preprocessing token. Additionally, warn when a user-defined literal operator is declared with a literal suffix identifier that doesn't begin with an underscore. Literal suffix identifiers that don't begin with an underscore are reserved for future standardization. This warning is enabled by default. -Wlto-type-mismatch During the link-time optimization warn about type mismatches in global declarations from different compilation units. Requires -flto to be enabled. Enabled by default. -Wno-narrowing (C++ and Objective-C++ only) For C++11 and later standards, narrowing conversions are diagnosed by default, as required by the standard. A narrowing conversion from a constant produces an error, and a narrowing conversion from a non-constant produces a warning, but -Wno-narrowing suppresses the diagnostic. Note that this does not affect the meaning of well-formed code; narrowing conversions are still considered ill-formed in SFINAE contexts. With -Wnarrowing in C++98, warn when a narrowing conversion prohibited by C++11 occurs within '{ }', e.g. int i = { 2.2 }; // error: narrowing from double to int This flag is included in -Wall and -Wc++11-compat. -Wnoexcept (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a noexcept-expression evaluates to false because of a call to a function that does not have a non-throwing exception specification (i.e. throw() or noexcept) but is known by the compiler to never throw an exception. -Wnoexcept-type (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn if the C++17 feature making noexcept part of a function type changes the mangled name of a symbol relative to C++14. Enabled by -Wabi and -Wc++17-compat. As an example: template void f(T t) { t(); }; void g() noexcept; void h() { f(g); } In C++14, f calls f, but in C++17 it calls f. -Wclass-memaccess (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when the destination of a call to a raw memory function such as memset or memcpy is an object of class type, and when writing into such an object might bypass the class non-trivial or deleted constructor or copy assignment, violate const-correctness or encapsulation, or corrupt virtual table pointers. Modifying the representation of such objects may violate invariants maintained by member functions of the class. For example, the call to memset below is undefined because it modifies a non-trivial class object and is, therefore, diagnosed. The safe way to either initialize or clear the storage of objects of such types is by using the appropriate constructor or assignment operator, if one is available. std::string str = "abc"; memset (&str, 0, sizeof str); The -Wclass-memaccess option is enabled by -Wall. Explicitly casting the pointer to the class object to void * or to a type that can be safely accessed by the raw memory function suppresses the warning. -Wnon-virtual-dtor (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a class has virtual functions and an accessible non-virtual destructor itself or in an accessible polymorphic base class, in which case it is possible but unsafe to delete an instance of a derived class through a pointer to the class itself or base class. This warning is automatically enabled if -Weffc++ is specified. -Wregister (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn on uses of the register storage class specifier, except when it is part of the GNU Explicit Register Variables extension. The use of the register keyword as storage class specifier has been deprecated in C++11 and removed in C++17. Enabled by default with -std=c++17. -Wreorder (C++ and Objective-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 rearranges 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. -Wno-pessimizing-move (C++ and Objective-C++ only) This warning warns when a call to std::move prevents copy elision. A typical scenario when copy elision can occur is when returning in a function with a class return type, when the expression being returned is the name of a non-volatile automatic object, and is not a function parameter, and has the same type as the function return type. struct T { … }; T fn() { T t; … return std::move (t); } But in this example, the std::move call prevents copy elision. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wno-redundant-move (C++ and Objective-C++ only) This warning warns about redundant calls to std::move; that is, when a move operation would have been performed even without the std::move call. This happens because the compiler is forced to treat the object as if it were an rvalue in certain situations such as returning a local variable, where copy elision isn't applicable. Consider: struct T { … }; T fn(T t) { … return std::move (t); } Here, the std::move call is redundant. Because G++ implements Core Issue 1579, another example is: struct T { // convertible to U … }; struct U { … }; U fn() { T t; … return std::move (t); } In this example, copy elision isn't applicable because the type of the expression being returned and the function return type differ, yet G++ treats the return value as if it were designated by an rvalue. This warning is enabled by -Wextra. -fext-numeric-literals (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Accept imaginary, fixed-point, or machine-defined literal number suffixes as GNU extensions. When this option is turned off these suffixes are treated as C++11 user-defined literal numeric suffixes. This is on by default for all pre-C++11 dialects and all GNU dialects: -std=c++98, -std=gnu++98, -std=gnu++11, -std=gnu++14. This option is off by default for ISO C++11 onwards (-std=c++11, ...). The following -W… options are not affected by -Wall. -Weffc++ (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about violations of the following style guidelines from Scott Meyers' Effective C++ series of books: * Define a copy constructor and an assignment operator for classes with dynamically-allocated memory. * Prefer initialization to assignment in constructors. * Have operator= return a reference to *this. * Don't try to return a reference when you must return an object. * Distinguish between prefix and postfix forms of increment and decrement operators. * Never overload &&, ||, or ,. This option also enables -Wnon-virtual-dtor, which is also one of the effective C++ recommendations. However, the check is extended to warn about the lack of virtual destructor in accessible non-polymorphic bases classes too. 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. -Wstrict-null-sentinel (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn 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 rather than a null pointer, it is guaranteed to be of the same size as a pointer. But this use is not portable across different compilers. -Wno-non-template-friend (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Disable warnings when non-template friend functions are declared within a template. In very old versions of GCC that predate implementation of the ISO standard, declarations such as 'friend int foo(int)', where the name of the friend is an unqualified-id, could be interpreted as a particular specialization of a template function; the warning exists to diagnose compatibility problems, and is enabled by default. -Wold-style-cast (C++ and Objective-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++ and Objective-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(); fails to compile. -Wno-pmf-conversions (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Disable the diagnostic for converting a bound pointer to member function to a plain pointer. -Wsign-promo (C++ and Objective-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++ tried to preserve unsignedness, but the standard mandates the current behavior. -Wtemplates (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a primary template declaration is encountered. Some coding rules disallow templates, and this may be used to enforce that rule. The warning is inactive inside a system header file, such as the STL, so one can still use the STL. One may also instantiate or specialize templates. -Wmultiple-inheritance (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a class is defined with multiple direct base classes. Some coding rules disallow multiple inheritance, and this may be used to enforce that rule. The warning is inactive inside a system header file, such as the STL, so one can still use the STL. One may also define classes that indirectly use multiple inheritance. -Wvirtual-inheritance Warn when a class is defined with a virtual direct base class. Some coding rules disallow multiple inheritance, and this may be used to enforce that rule. The warning is inactive inside a system header file, such as the STL, so one can still use the STL. One may also define classes that indirectly use virtual inheritance. -Wnamespaces Warn when a namespace definition is opened. Some coding rules disallow namespaces, and this may be used to enforce that rule. The warning is inactive inside a system header file, such as the STL, so one can still use the STL. One may also use using directives and qualified names. -Wno-terminate (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Disable the warning about a throw-expression that will immediately result in a call to terminate. -Wno-class-conversion (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Disable the warning about the case when a conversion function converts an object to the same type, to a base class of that type, or to void; such a conversion function will never be called. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options, Previous: C Dialect Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Warning Options Link: prev: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options Next: Warning Options, Previous: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.7 Options to Control Diagnostic Messages Formatting Traditionally, diagnostic messages have been formatted irrespective of the output device's aspect (e.g. its width, …). You can use the options described below to control the formatting algorithm for diagnostic messages, e.g. how many characters per line, how often source location information should be reported. Note that some language front ends may not honor these options. -fmessage-length=n Try to format error messages so that they fit on lines of about n characters. If n is zero, then no line-wrapping is done; each error message appears on a single line. This is the default for all front ends. Note - this option also affects the display of the '#error' and '#warning' pre-processor directives, and the 'deprecated' function/type/variable attribute. It does not however affect the 'pragma GCC warning' and 'pragma GCC error' pragmas. -fdiagnostics-show-location=once Only meaningful in line-wrapping mode. Instructs the diagnostic messages reporter to emit source location information once; 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-color[=WHEN] -fno-diagnostics-color Use color in diagnostics. WHEN is 'never', 'always', or 'auto'. The default depends on how the compiler has been configured, it can be any of the above WHEN options or also 'never' if GCC_COLORS environment variable isn't present in the environment, and 'auto' otherwise. 'auto' means to use color only when the standard error is a terminal. The forms -fdiagnostics-color and -fno-diagnostics-color are aliases for -fdiagnostics-color=always and -fdiagnostics-color=never, respectively. The colors are defined by the environment variable GCC_COLORS. Its value is a colon-separated list of capabilities and Select Graphic Rendition (SGR) substrings. SGR commands are interpreted by the terminal or terminal emulator. (See the section in the documentation of your text terminal for permitted values and their meanings as character attributes.) These substring values are integers in decimal representation and can be concatenated with semicolons. Common values to concatenate include '1' for bold, '4' for underline, '5' for blink, '7' for inverse, '39' for default foreground color, '30' to '37' for foreground colors, '90' to '97' for 16-color mode foreground colors, '38;5;0' to '38;5;255' for 88-color and 256-color modes foreground colors, '49' for default background color, '40' to '47' for background colors, '100' to '107' for 16-color mode background colors, and '48;5;0' to '48;5;255' for 88-color and 256-color modes background colors. The default GCC_COLORS is error=01;31:warning=01;35:note=01;36:range1=32:range2=34:locus=01:\ quote=01:fixit-insert=32:fixit-delete=31:\ diff-filename=01:diff-hunk=32:diff-delete=31:diff-insert=32:\ type-diff=01;32 where '01;31' is bold red, '01;35' is bold magenta, '01;36' is bold cyan, '32' is green, '34' is blue, '01' is bold, and '31' is red. Setting GCC_COLORS to the empty string disables colors. Supported capabilities are as follows. error= SGR substring for error: markers. warning= SGR substring for warning: markers. note= SGR substring for note: markers. range1= SGR substring for first additional range. range2= SGR substring for second additional range. locus= SGR substring for location information, 'file:line' or 'file:line:column' etc. quote= SGR substring for information printed within quotes. fixit-insert= SGR substring for fix-it hints suggesting text to be inserted or replaced. fixit-delete= SGR substring for fix-it hints suggesting text to be deleted. diff-filename= SGR substring for filename headers within generated patches. diff-hunk= SGR substring for the starts of hunks within generated patches. diff-delete= SGR substring for deleted lines within generated patches. diff-insert= SGR substring for inserted lines within generated patches. type-diff= SGR substring for highlighting mismatching types within template arguments in the C++ frontend. -fno-diagnostics-show-option By default, each diagnostic emitted includes text indicating the command-line option that directly controls the diagnostic (if such an option is known to the diagnostic machinery). Specifying the -fno-diagnostics-show-option flag suppresses that behavior. -fno-diagnostics-show-caret By default, each diagnostic emitted includes the original source line and a caret '^' indicating the column. This option suppresses this information. The source line is truncated to n characters, if the -fmessage-length=n option is given. When the output is done to the terminal, the width is limited to the width given by the COLUMNS environment variable or, if not set, to the terminal width. -fno-diagnostics-show-labels By default, when printing source code (via -fdiagnostics-show-caret), diagnostics can label ranges of source code with pertinent information, such as the types of expressions: printf ("foo %s bar", long_i + long_j); ~^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | | char * long int This option suppresses the printing of these labels (in the example above, the vertical bars and the “char *” and “long int” text). -fno-diagnostics-show-line-numbers By default, when printing source code (via -fdiagnostics-show-caret), a left margin is printed, showing line numbers. This option suppresses this left margin. -fdiagnostics-minimum-margin-width=width This option controls the minimum width of the left margin printed by -fdiagnostics-show-line-numbers. It defaults to 6. -fdiagnostics-parseable-fixits Emit fix-it hints in a machine-parseable format, suitable for consumption by IDEs. For each fix-it, a line will be printed after the relevant diagnostic, starting with the string “fix-it:”. For example: fix-it:"test.c":{45:3-45:21}:"gtk_widget_show_all" The location is expressed as a half-open range, expressed as a count of bytes, starting at byte 1 for the initial column. In the above example, bytes 3 through 20 of line 45 of “test.c” are to be replaced with the given string: 00000000011111111112222222222 12345678901234567890123456789 gtk_widget_showall (dlg); ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ gtk_widget_show_all The filename and replacement string escape backslash as “\\", tab as “\t”, newline as “\n”, double quotes as “\"”, non-printable characters as octal (e.g. vertical tab as “\013”). An empty replacement string indicates that the given range is to be removed. An empty range (e.g. “45:3-45:3”) indicates that the string is to be inserted at the given position. -fdiagnostics-generate-patch Print fix-it hints to stderr in unified diff format, after any diagnostics are printed. For example: --- test.c +++ test.c @ -42,5 +42,5 @ void show_cb(GtkDialog *dlg) { - gtk_widget_showall(dlg); + gtk_widget_show_all(dlg); } The diff may or may not be colorized, following the same rules as for diagnostics (see -fdiagnostics-color). -fdiagnostics-show-template-tree In the C++ frontend, when printing diagnostics showing mismatching template types, such as: could not convert 'std::map >()' from 'map<[...],vector>' to 'map<[...],vector> the -fdiagnostics-show-template-tree flag enables printing a tree-like structure showing the common and differing parts of the types, such as: map< [...], vector< [double != float]>> The parts that differ are highlighted with color (“double” and “float” in this case). -fno-elide-type By default when the C++ frontend prints diagnostics showing mismatching template types, common parts of the types are printed as “[...]” to simplify the error message. For example: could not convert 'std::map >()' from 'map<[...],vector>' to 'map<[...],vector> Specifying the -fno-elide-type flag suppresses that behavior. This flag also affects the output of the -fdiagnostics-show-template-tree flag. -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. -fdiagnostics-format=FORMAT Select a different format for printing diagnostics. FORMAT is 'text' or 'json'. The default is 'text'. The 'json' format consists of a top-level JSON array containing JSON objects representing the diagnostics. The JSON is emitted as one line, without formatting; the examples below have been formatted for clarity. Diagnostics can have child diagnostics. For example, this error and note: misleading-indentation.c:15:3: warning: this 'if' clause does not guard... [-Wmisleading-indentation] 15 | if (flag) | ^~ misleading-indentation.c:17:5: note: ...this statement, but the latter is misleadingly indented as if it were guarded by the 'if' 17 | y = 2; | ^ might be printed in JSON form (after formatting) like this: [ { "kind": "warning", "locations": [ { "caret": { "column": 3, "file": "misleading-indentation.c", "line": 15 }, "finish": { "column": 4, "file": "misleading-indentation.c", "line": 15 } } ], "message": "this \u2018if\u2019 clause does not guard...", "option": "-Wmisleading-indentation", "children": [ { "kind": "note", "locations": [ { "caret": { "column": 5, "file": "misleading-indentation.c", "line": 17 } } ], "message": "...this statement, but the latter is …" } ] }, … ] where the note is a child of the warning. A diagnostic has a kind. If this is warning, then there is an option key describing the command-line option controlling the warning. A diagnostic can contain zero or more locations. Each location has up to three positions within it: a caret position and optional start and finish positions. A location can also have an optional label string. For example, this error: bad-binary-ops.c:64:23: error: invalid operands to binary + (have 'S' {aka 'struct s'} and 'T' {aka 'struct t'}) 64 | return callee_4a () + callee_4b (); | ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ | | | | | T {aka struct t} | S {aka struct s} has three locations. Its primary location is at the “+” token at column 23. It has two secondary locations, describing the left and right-hand sides of the expression, which have labels. It might be printed in JSON form as: { "children": [], "kind": "error", "locations": [ { "caret": { "column": 23, "file": "bad-binary-ops.c", "line": 64 } }, { "caret": { "column": 10, "file": "bad-binary-ops.c", "line": 64 }, "finish": { "column": 21, "file": "bad-binary-ops.c", "line": 64 }, "label": "S {aka struct s}" }, { "caret": { "column": 25, "file": "bad-binary-ops.c", "line": 64 }, "finish": { "column": 36, "file": "bad-binary-ops.c", "line": 64 }, "label": "T {aka struct t}" } ], "message": "invalid operands to binary + …" } If a diagnostic contains fix-it hints, it has a fixits array, consisting of half-open intervals, similar to the output of -fdiagnostics-parseable-fixits. For example, this diagnostic with a replacement fix-it hint: demo.c:8:15: error: 'struct s' has no member named 'colour'; did you mean 'color'? 8 | return ptr->colour; | ^~~~~~ | color might be printed in JSON form as: { "children": [], "fixits": [ { "next": { "column": 21, "file": "demo.c", "line": 8 }, "start": { "column": 15, "file": "demo.c", "line": 8 }, "string": "color" } ], "kind": "error", "locations": [ { "caret": { "column": 15, "file": "demo.c", "line": 8 }, "finish": { "column": 20, "file": "demo.c", "line": 8 } } ], "message": "\u2018struct s\u2019 has no member named …" } where the fix-it hint suggests replacing the text from start up to but not including next with string's value. Deletions are expressed via an empty value for string, insertions by having start equal next. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Warning Options, Previous: Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Debugging Options Link: prev: Diagnostic Message Formatting Options Next: Debugging Options, Previous: Diagnostic Message Formatting Options, ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.8 Options to Request or Suppress Warnings Warnings are diagnostic messages that report constructions that are not inherently erroneous but that are risky or suggest there may have been an error. The following language-independent options do not enable specific warnings but control the kinds of diagnostics produced by GCC. -fsyntax-only Check the code for syntax errors, but don't do anything beyond that. -fmax-errors=n Limits the maximum number of error messages to n, at which point GCC bails out rather than attempting to continue processing the source code. If n is 0 (the default), there is no limit on the number of error messages produced. If -Wfatal-errors is also specified, then -Wfatal-errors takes precedence over this option. -w Inhibit all warning messages. -Werror Make all warnings into errors. -Werror= Make the specified warning into an error. 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. The warning message for each controllable warning includes the option that controls the warning. That option can then be used with -Werror= and -Wno-error= as described above. (Printing of the option in the warning message can be disabled using the -fno-diagnostics-show-option flag.) Note that specifying -Werror=foo automatically implies -Wfoo. However, -Wno-error=foo does not imply anything. -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. You can request many specific warnings with options beginning with '-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. For further language-specific options also refer to C++ Dialect Options and Objective-C and Objective-C++ Dialect Options. Some options, such as -Wall and -Wextra, turn on other options, such as -Wunused, which may turn on further options, such as -Wunused-value. The combined effect of positive and negative forms is that more specific options have priority over less specific ones, independently of their position in the command-line. For options of the same specificity, the last one takes effect. Options enabled or disabled via pragmas (see Diagnostic Pragmas) take effect as if they appeared at the end of the command-line. When an unrecognized warning option is requested (e.g., -Wunknown-warning), GCC emits a diagnostic stating that the option is not recognized. However, if the -Wno- form is used, the behavior is slightly different: no diagnostic is produced for -Wno-unknown-warning unless other diagnostics are being produced. This allows the use of new -Wno- options with old compilers, but if something goes wrong, the compiler warns that an unrecognized option is present. -Wpedantic -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 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. -Wpedantic 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. See Alternate Keywords. Some users try to use -Wpedantic 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 -Wpedantic. 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 'gnu90' or 'gnu99', there is a corresponding base standard, the version of ISO C on which the GNU extended dialect is based. Warnings from -Wpedantic are given where they are required by the base standard. (It does 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 Give an error whenever the base standard (see -Wpedantic) requires a diagnostic, in some cases where there is undefined behavior at compile-time and in some other cases that do not prevent compilation of programs that are valid according to the standard. This is not equivalent to -Werror=pedantic, since there are errors enabled by this option and not enabled by the latter and vice versa. -Wall 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. -Wall turns on the following warning flags: -Waddress -Warray-bounds=1 (only with -O2) -Wbool-compare -Wbool-operation -Wc++11-compat -Wc++14-compat -Wcatch-value (C++ and Objective-C++ only) -Wchar-subscripts -Wcomment -Wduplicate-decl-specifier (C and Objective-C only) -Wenum-compare (in C/ObjC; this is on by default in C++) -Wformat -Wint-in-bool-context -Wimplicit (C and Objective-C only) -Wimplicit-int (C and Objective-C only) -Wimplicit-function-declaration (C and Objective-C only) -Winit-self (only for C++) -Wlogical-not-parentheses -Wmain (only for C/ObjC and unless -ffreestanding) -Wmaybe-uninitialized -Wmemset-elt-size -Wmemset-transposed-args -Wmisleading-indentation (only for C/C++) -Wmissing-attributes -Wmissing-braces (only for C/ObjC) -Wmultistatement-macros -Wnarrowing (only for C++) -Wnonnull -Wnonnull-compare -Wopenmp-simd -Wparentheses -Wpessimizing-move (only for C++) -Wpointer-sign -Wreorder -Wrestrict -Wreturn-type -Wsequence-point -Wsign-compare (only in C++) -Wsizeof-pointer-div -Wsizeof-pointer-memaccess -Wstrict-aliasing -Wstrict-overflow=1 -Wswitch -Wtautological-compare -Wtrigraphs -Wuninitialized -Wunknown-pragmas -Wunused-function -Wunused-label -Wunused-value -Wunused-variable -Wvolatile-register-var Note that some warning flags 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. Some of them are enabled by -Wextra but many of them must be enabled individually. -Wextra This enables some extra warning flags that are not enabled by -Wall. (This option used to be called -W. The older name is still supported, but the newer name is more descriptive.) -Wclobbered -Wcast-function-type -Wdeprecated-copy (C++ only) -Wempty-body -Wignored-qualifiers -Wimplicit-fallthrough=3 -Wmissing-field-initializers -Wmissing-parameter-type (C only) -Wold-style-declaration (C only) -Woverride-init -Wsign-compare (C only) -Wredundant-move (only for C++) -Wtype-limits -Wuninitialized -Wshift-negative-value (in C++03 and in C99 and newer) -Wunused-parameter (only with -Wunused or -Wall) -Wunused-but-set-parameter (only with -Wunused or -Wall) The option -Wextra also prints warning messages for the following cases: * A pointer is compared against integer zero with <, <=, >, or >=. * (C++ only) An enumerator and a non-enumerator both appear in a conditional expression. * (C++ only) Ambiguous virtual bases. * (C++ only) Subscripting an array that has been declared register. * (C++ only) Taking the address of a variable that has been declared register. * (C++ only) A base class is not initialized in the copy constructor of a derived class. -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. -Wno-coverage-mismatch Warn if feedback profiles do not match when using the -fprofile-use option. If a source file is changed between compiling with -fprofile-generate and with -fprofile-use, the files with the profile feedback can fail to match the source file and GCC cannot use the profile feedback information. By default, this warning is enabled and is treated as an error. -Wno-coverage-mismatch can be used to disable the warning or -Wno-error=coverage-mismatch can be used to disable the error. Disabling the error for this warning can result in poorly optimized code and is useful only in the case of very minor changes such as bug fixes to an existing code-base. Completely disabling the warning is not recommended. -Wno-cpp (C, Objective-C, C++, Objective-C++ and Fortran only) Suppress warning messages emitted by #warning directives. -Wdouble-promotion (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only) Give a warning when a value of type float is implicitly promoted to double. CPUs with a 32-bit “single-precision” floating-point unit implement float in hardware, but emulate double in software. On such a machine, doing computations using double values is much more expensive because of the overhead required for software emulation. It is easy to accidentally do computations with double because floating-point literals are implicitly of type double. For example, in: float area(float radius) { return 3.14159 * radius * radius; } the compiler performs the entire computation with double because the floating-point literal is a double. -Wduplicate-decl-specifier (C and Objective-C only) Warn if a declaration has duplicate const, volatile, restrict or _Atomic specifier. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wformat -Wformat=n 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 (see Function 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 -Wpedantic is used with -Wformat, warnings are 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). See Options Controlling C Dialect. -Wformat=1 -Wformat Option -Wformat is equivalent to -Wformat=1, and -Wno-format is equivalent to -Wformat=0. Since -Wformat also checks for null format arguments for several functions, -Wformat also implies -Wnonnull. Some aspects of this level of format checking can be disabled by the options: -Wno-format-contains-nul, -Wno-format-extra-args, and -Wno-format-zero-length. -Wformat is enabled by -Wall. -Wno-format-contains-nul If -Wformat is specified, do not warn about format strings that contain NUL bytes. -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 suppresses the warning if the unused arguments are all pointers, since the Single Unix Specification says that such unused arguments are allowed. -Wformat-overflow -Wformat-overflow=level Warn about calls to formatted input/output functions such as sprintf and vsprintf that might overflow the destination buffer. When the exact number of bytes written by a format directive cannot be determined at compile-time it is estimated based on heuristics that depend on the level argument and on optimization. While enabling optimization will in most cases improve the accuracy of the warning, it may also result in false positives. -Wformat-overflow -Wformat-overflow=1 Level 1 of -Wformat-overflow enabled by -Wformat employs a conservative approach that warns only about calls that most likely overflow the buffer. At this level, numeric arguments to format directives with unknown values are assumed to have the value of one, and strings of unknown length to be empty. Numeric arguments that are known to be bounded to a subrange of their type, or string arguments whose output is bounded either by their directive's precision or by a finite set of string literals, are assumed to take on the value within the range that results in the most bytes on output. For example, the call to sprintf below is diagnosed because even with both a and b equal to zero, the terminating NUL character ('\0') appended by the function to the destination buffer will be written past its end. Increasing the size of the buffer by a single byte is sufficient to avoid the warning, though it may not be sufficient to avoid the overflow. void f (int a, int b) { char buf [13]; sprintf (buf, "a = %i, b = %i\n", a, b); } -Wformat-overflow=2 Level 2 warns also about calls that might overflow the destination buffer given an argument of sufficient length or magnitude. At level 2, unknown numeric arguments are assumed to have the minimum representable value for signed types with a precision greater than 1, and the maximum representable value otherwise. Unknown string arguments whose length cannot be assumed to be bounded either by the directive's precision, or by a finite set of string literals they may evaluate to, or the character array they may point to, are assumed to be 1 character long. At level 2, the call in the example above is again diagnosed, but this time because with a equal to a 32-bit INT_MIN the first %i directive will write some of its digits beyond the end of the destination buffer. To make the call safe regardless of the values of the two variables, the size of the destination buffer must be increased to at least 34 bytes. GCC includes the minimum size of the buffer in an informational note following the warning. An alternative to increasing the size of the destination buffer is to constrain the range of formatted values. The maximum length of string arguments can be bounded by specifying the precision in the format directive. When numeric arguments of format directives can be assumed to be bounded by less than the precision of their type, choosing an appropriate length modifier to the format specifier will reduce the required buffer size. For example, if a and b in the example above can be assumed to be within the precision of the short int type then using either the %hi format directive or casting the argument to short reduces the maximum required size of the buffer to 24 bytes. void f (int a, int b) { char buf [23]; sprintf (buf, "a = %hi, b = %i\n", a, (short)b); } -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=2 Enable -Wformat plus additional format checks. Currently equivalent to -Wformat -Wformat-nonliteral -Wformat-security -Wformat-y2k. -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. -Wformat-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-signedness If -Wformat is specified, also warn if the format string requires an unsigned argument and the argument is signed and vice versa. -Wformat-truncation -Wformat-truncation=level Warn about calls to formatted input/output functions such as snprintf and vsnprintf that might result in output truncation. When the exact number of bytes written by a format directive cannot be determined at compile-time it is estimated based on heuristics that depend on the level argument and on optimization. While enabling optimization will in most cases improve the accuracy of the warning, it may also result in false positives. Except as noted otherwise, the option uses the same logic -Wformat-overflow. -Wformat-truncation -Wformat-truncation=1 Level 1 of -Wformat-truncation enabled by -Wformat employs a conservative approach that warns only about calls to bounded functions whose return value is unused and that will most likely result in output truncation. -Wformat-truncation=2 Level 2 warns also about calls to bounded functions whose return value is used and that might result in truncation given an argument of sufficient length or magnitude. -Wformat-y2k If -Wformat is specified, also warn about strftime formats that may yield only a two-digit year. -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. -Wnonnull-compare Warn when comparing an argument marked with the nonnull function attribute against null inside the function. -Wnonnull-compare is included in -Wall. It can be disabled with the -Wno-nonnull-compare option. -Wnull-dereference Warn if the compiler detects paths that trigger erroneous or undefined behavior due to dereferencing a null pointer. This option is only active when -fdelete-null-pointer-checks is active, which is enabled by optimizations in most targets. The precision of the warnings depends on the optimization options used. -Winit-self (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only) Warn about uninitialized variables that are initialized with themselves. Note this option can only be used with the -Wuninitialized option. For example, GCC warns about i being uninitialized in the following snippet only when -Winit-self has been specified: int f() { int i = i; return i; } This warning is enabled by -Wall in C++. -Wimplicit-int (C and Objective-C only) Warn when a declaration does not specify a type. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wimplicit-function-declaration (C and Objective-C only) Give a warning whenever a function is used before being declared. In C99 mode (-std=c99 or -std=gnu99), this warning is enabled by default and it is made into an error by -pedantic-errors. This warning is also enabled by -Wall. -Wimplicit (C and Objective-C only) Same as -Wimplicit-int and -Wimplicit-function-declaration. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wimplicit-fallthrough -Wimplicit-fallthrough is the same as -Wimplicit-fallthrough=3 and -Wno-implicit-fallthrough is the same as -Wimplicit-fallthrough=0. -Wimplicit-fallthrough=n Warn when a switch case falls through. For example: switch (cond) { case 1: a = 1; break; case 2: a = 2; case 3: a = 3; break; } This warning does not warn when the last statement of a case cannot fall through, e.g. when there is a return statement or a call to function declared with the noreturn attribute. -Wimplicit-fallthrough= also takes into account control flow statements, such as ifs, and only warns when appropriate. E.g. switch (cond) { case 1: if (i > 3) { bar (5); break; } else if (i < 1) { bar (0); } else return; default: … } Since there are occasions where a switch case fall through is desirable, GCC provides an attribute, __attribute__ ((fallthrough)), that is to be used along with a null statement to suppress this warning that would normally occur: switch (cond) { case 1: bar (0); __attribute__ ((fallthrough)); default: … } C++17 provides a standard way to suppress the -Wimplicit-fallthrough warning using [[fallthrough]]; instead of the GNU attribute. In C++11 or C++14 users can use [[gnu::fallthrough]];, which is a GNU extension. Instead of these attributes, it is also possible to add a fallthrough comment to silence the warning. The whole body of the C or C++ style comment should match the given regular expressions listed below. The option argument n specifies what kind of comments are accepted: * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=0 disables the warning altogether. * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=1 matches .* regular expression, any comment is used as fallthrough comment. * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=2 case insensitively matches .*falls?[ \t-]*thr(ough|u).* regular expression. * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=3 case sensitively matches one of the following regular expressions: * -fallthrough * @fallthrough@ * lint -fallthrough[ \t]* * [ \t.!]*(ELSE,? |INTENTIONAL(LY)? )? FALL(S | |-)?THR(OUGH|U)[ \t.!]*(-[^\n\r]*)? * [ \t.!]*(Else,? |Intentional(ly)? )? Fall((s | |-)[Tt]|t)hr(ough|u)[ \t.!]*(-[^\n\r]*)? * [ \t.!]*([Ee]lse,? |[Ii]ntentional(ly)? )? fall(s | |-)?thr(ough|u)[ \t.!]*(-[^\n\r]*)? * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=4 case sensitively matches one of the following regular expressions: * -fallthrough * @fallthrough@ * lint -fallthrough[ \t]* * [ \t]*FALLTHR(OUGH|U)[ \t]* * -Wimplicit-fallthrough=5 doesn't recognize any comments as fallthrough comments, only attributes disable the warning. The comment needs to be followed after optional whitespace and other comments by case or default keywords or by a user label that precedes some case or default label. switch (cond) { case 1: bar (0); /* FALLTHRU */ default: … } The -Wimplicit-fallthrough=3 warning is enabled by -Wextra. -Wif-not-aligned (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only) Control if warning triggered by the warn_if_not_aligned attribute should be issued. This is enabled by default. Use -Wno-if-not-aligned to disable it. -Wignored-qualifiers (C and C++ only) Warn if the return type of a function has a type qualifier such as const. For ISO C such a type qualifier has no effect, since the value returned by a function is not an lvalue. For C++, the warning is only emitted for scalar types or void. ISO C prohibits qualified void return types on function definitions, so such return types always receive a warning even without this option. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wignored-attributes (C and C++ only) Warn when an attribute is ignored. This is different from the -Wattributes option in that it warns whenever the compiler decides to drop an attribute, not that the attribute is either unknown, used in a wrong place, etc. This warning is enabled by default. -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 default in C++ and is enabled by either -Wall or -Wpedantic. -Wmisleading-indentation (C and C++ only) Warn when the indentation of the code does not reflect the block structure. Specifically, a warning is issued for if, else, while, and for clauses with a guarded statement that does not use braces, followed by an unguarded statement with the same indentation. In the following example, the call to “bar” is misleadingly indented as if it were guarded by the “if” conditional. if (some_condition ()) foo (); bar (); /* Gotcha: this is not guarded by the "if". */ In the case of mixed tabs and spaces, the warning uses the -ftabstop= option to determine if the statements line up (defaulting to 8). The warning is not issued for code involving multiline preprocessor logic such as the following example. if (flagA) foo (0); #if SOME_CONDITION_THAT_DOES_NOT_HOLD if (flagB) #endif foo (1); The warning is not issued after a #line directive, since this typically indicates autogenerated code, and no assumptions can be made about the layout of the file that the directive references. This warning is enabled by -Wall in C and C++. -Wmissing-attributes Warn when a declaration of a function is missing one or more attributes that a related function is declared with and whose absence may adversely affect the correctness or efficiency of generated code. For example, the warning is issued for declarations of aliases that use attributes to specify less restrictive requirements than those of their targets. This typically represents a potential optimization opportunity. By contrast, the -Wattribute-alias=2 option controls warnings issued when the alias is more restrictive than the target, which could lead to incorrect code generation. Attributes considered include alloc_align, alloc_size, cold, const, hot, leaf, malloc, nonnull, noreturn, nothrow, pure, returns_nonnull, and returns_twice. In C++, the warning is issued when an explicit specialization of a primary template declared with attribute alloc_align, alloc_size, assume_aligned, format, format_arg, malloc, or nonnull is declared without it. Attributes deprecated, error, and warning suppress the warning. (see Function Attributes). You can use the copy attribute to apply the same set of attributes to a declaration as that on another declaration without explicitly enumerating the attributes. This attribute can be applied to declarations of functions (see Common Function Attributes), variables (see Common Variable Attributes), or types (see Common Type Attributes). -Wmissing-attributes is enabled by -Wall. For example, since the declaration of the primary function template below makes use of both attribute malloc and alloc_size the declaration of the explicit specialization of the template is diagnosed because it is missing one of the attributes. template T* __attribute__ ((malloc, alloc_size (1))) allocate (size_t); template <> void* __attribute__ ((malloc)) // missing alloc_size allocate (size_t); -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. This warning is enabled by -Wall in C. 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. -Wmissing-profile Warn if feedback profiles are missing when using the -fprofile-use option. This option diagnoses those cases where a new function or a new file is added to the user code between compiling with -fprofile-generate and with -fprofile-use, without regenerating the profiles. In these cases, the profile feedback data files do not contain any profile feedback information for the newly added function or file respectively. Also, in the case when profile count data (.gcda) files are removed, GCC cannot use any profile feedback information. In all these cases, warnings are issued to inform the user that a profile generation step is due. -Wno-missing-profile can be used to disable the warning. Ignoring the warning can result in poorly optimized code. Completely disabling the warning is not recommended and should be done only when non-existent profile data is justified. -Wmultistatement-macros Warn about unsafe multiple statement macros that appear to be guarded by a clause such as if, else, for, switch, or while, in which only the first statement is actually guarded after the macro is expanded. For example: #define DOIT x++; y++ if (c) DOIT; will increment y unconditionally, not just when c holds. The can usually be fixed by wrapping the macro in a do-while loop: #define DOIT do { x++; y++; } while (0) if (c) DOIT; This warning is enabled by -Wall in C and C++. -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. 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 for dangerous uses of the GNU extension to ?: with omitted middle operand. When the condition in the ?: operator is a boolean expression, the omitted value is always 1. Often programmers expect it to be a value computed inside the conditional expression instead. For C++ this also warns for some cases of unnecessary parentheses in declarations, which can indicate an attempt at a function call instead of a declaration: { // Declares a local variable called mymutex. std::unique_lock (mymutex); // User meant std::unique_lock lock (mymutex); } 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 define 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 C++17 standard will define the order of evaluation of operands in more cases: in particular it requires that the right-hand side of an assignment be evaluated before the left-hand side, so the above examples are no longer undefined. But this warning will still warn about them, to help people avoid writing code that is undefined in C and earlier revisions of C++. 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++. -Wno-return-local-addr Do not warn about returning a pointer (or in C++, a reference) to a variable that goes out of scope after the function returns. -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 (falling off the end of the function body is considered returning without a value). For C only, warn about a return statement with an expression in a function whose return type is void, unless the expression type is also void. As a GNU extension, the latter case is accepted without a warning unless -Wpedantic is used. Attempting to use the return value of a non-void function other than main that flows off the end by reaching the closing curly brace that terminates the function is undefined. Unlike in C, in C++, flowing off the end of a non-void function other than main results in undefined behavior even when the value of the function is not used. This warning is enabled by default in C++ and by -Wall otherwise. -Wshift-count-negative Warn if shift count is negative. This warning is enabled by default. -Wshift-count-overflow Warn if shift count >= width of type. This warning is enabled by default. -Wshift-negative-value Warn if left shifting a negative value. This warning is enabled by -Wextra in C99 and C++11 modes (and newer). -Wshift-overflow -Wshift-overflow=n Warn about left shift overflows. This warning is enabled by default in C99 and C++11 modes (and newer). -Wshift-overflow=1 This is the warning level of -Wshift-overflow and is enabled by default in C99 and C++11 modes (and newer). This warning level does not warn about left-shifting 1 into the sign bit. (However, in C, such an overflow is still rejected in contexts where an integer constant expression is required.) No warning is emitted in C++2A mode (and newer), as signed left shifts always wrap. -Wshift-overflow=2 This warning level also warns about left-shifting 1 into the sign bit, unless C++14 mode (or newer) is active. -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 (even if there is a default label). 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. The only difference between -Wswitch and this option is that this option gives a warning about an omitted enumeration code even if there is a default label. -Wswitch-bool Warn whenever a switch statement has an index of boolean type and the case values are outside the range of a boolean type. It is possible to suppress this warning by casting the controlling expression to a type other than bool. For example: switch ((int) (a == 4)) { … } This warning is enabled by default for C and C++ programs. -Wswitch-unreachable Warn whenever a switch statement contains statements between the controlling expression and the first case label, which will never be executed. For example: switch (cond) { i = 15; … case 5: … } -Wswitch-unreachable does not warn if the statement between the controlling expression and the first case label is just a declaration: switch (cond) { int i; … case 5: i = 5; … } This warning is enabled by default for C and C++ programs. -Wsync-nand (C and C++ only) Warn when __sync_fetch_and_nand and __sync_nand_and_fetch built-in functions are used. These functions changed semantics in GCC 4.4. -Wunused-but-set-parameter Warn whenever a function parameter is assigned to, but otherwise unused (aside from its declaration). To suppress this warning use the unused attribute (see Variable Attributes). This warning is also enabled by -Wunused together with -Wextra. -Wunused-but-set-variable Warn whenever a local variable is assigned to, but otherwise unused (aside from its declaration). This warning is enabled by -Wall. To suppress this warning use the unused attribute (see Variable Attributes). This warning is also enabled by -Wunused, which 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 (see Variable Attributes). -Wunused-local-typedefs (C, Objective-C, C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a typedef locally defined in a function is not used. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wunused-parameter Warn whenever a function parameter is unused aside from its declaration. To suppress this warning use the unused attribute (see Variable Attributes). -Wno-unused-result Do not warn if a caller of a function marked with attribute warn_unused_result (see Function Attributes) does not use its return value. The default is -Wunused-result. -Wunused-variable Warn whenever a local or static variable is unused aside from its declaration. This option implies -Wunused-const-variable=1 for C, but not for C++. This warning is enabled by -Wall. To suppress this warning use the unused attribute (see Variable Attributes). -Wunused-const-variable -Wunused-const-variable=n Warn whenever a constant static variable is unused aside from its declaration. -Wunused-const-variable=1 is enabled by -Wunused-variable for C, but not for C++. In C this declares variable storage, but in C++ this is not an error since const variables take the place of #defines. To suppress this warning use the unused attribute (see Variable Attributes). -Wunused-const-variable=1 This is the warning level that is enabled by -Wunused-variable for C. It warns only about unused static const variables defined in the main compilation unit, but not about static const variables declared in any header included. -Wunused-const-variable=2 This warning level also warns for unused constant static variables in headers (excluding system headers). This is the warning level of -Wunused-const-variable and must be explicitly requested since in C++ this isn't an error and in C it might be harder to clean up all headers included. -Wunused-value Warn whenever a statement computes a result that is explicitly not used. To suppress this warning cast the unused expression to void. This includes an expression-statement or the left-hand side of a comma expression that contains no side effects. For example, an expression such as x[i,j] causes a warning, while x[(void)i,j] does not. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -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. In C++, warn if a non-static reference or non-static const member appears in a class without constructors. If you want to warn about code that 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 that 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 depends 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. -Winvalid-memory-model Warn for invocations of __atomic Builtins, __sync Builtins, and the C11 atomic generic functions with a memory consistency argument that is either invalid for the operation or outside the range of values of the memory_order enumeration. For example, since the __atomic_store and __atomic_store_n built-ins are only defined for the relaxed, release, and sequentially consistent memory orders the following code is diagnosed: void store (int *i) { __atomic_store_n (i, 0, memory_order_consume); } -Winvalid-memory-model is enabled by default. -Wmaybe-uninitialized For an automatic (i.e. local) variable, if there exists a path from the function entry to a use of the variable that is initialized, but there exist some other paths for which the variable is not initialized, the compiler emits a warning if it cannot prove the uninitialized paths are not executed at run time. These warnings are only possible in optimizing compilation, because otherwise GCC does not keep track of the state of variables. These warnings are made optional because GCC may not be able to determine when the code is correct in spite of 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. To suppress the warning, you need to provide a default case with assert(0) or similar code. This option also warns when a non-volatile automatic variable might be changed by a call to longjmp. 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 that would cause a problem. Some spurious warnings can be avoided if you declare all the functions you use that never return as noreturn. See Function Attributes. This warning is enabled by -Wall or -Wextra. -Wunknown-pragmas Warn when a #pragma directive is encountered that is not understood by GCC. If this command-line option is used, warnings are even issued for unknown pragmas in system header files. This is not the case if the warnings are 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. -Wno-prio-ctor-dtor Do not warn if a priority from 0 to 100 is used for constructor or destructor. The use of constructor and destructor attributes allow you to assign a priority to the constructor/destructor to control its order of execution before main is called or after it returns. The priority values must be greater than 100 as the compiler reserves priority values between 0–100 for the implementation. -Wstrict-aliasing This option is only active when -fstrict-aliasing is active. It warns about code that 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. It is equivalent to -Wstrict-aliasing=3 -Wstrict-aliasing=n This option is only active when -fstrict-aliasing is active. It warns about code that might break the strict aliasing rules that the compiler is using for optimization. Higher levels correspond to higher accuracy (fewer false positives). Higher levels also correspond to more effort, similar to the way -O works. -Wstrict-aliasing is equivalent to -Wstrict-aliasing=3. Level 1: Most aggressive, quick, least accurate. Possibly useful when higher levels do not warn but -fstrict-aliasing still breaks the code, as it has very few false negatives. However, it has many false positives. Warns for all pointer conversions between possibly incompatible types, even if never dereferenced. Runs in the front end only. Level 2: Aggressive, quick, not too precise. May still have many false positives (not as many as level 1 though), and few false negatives (but possibly more than level 1). Unlike level 1, it only warns when an address is taken. Warns about incomplete types. Runs in the front end only. Level 3 (default for -Wstrict-aliasing): Should have very few false positives and few false negatives. Slightly slower than levels 1 or 2 when optimization is enabled. Takes care of the common pun+dereference pattern in the front end: *(int*)&some_float. If optimization is enabled, it also runs in the back end, where it deals with multiple statement cases using flow-sensitive points-to information. Only warns when the converted pointer is dereferenced. Does not warn about incomplete types. -Wstrict-overflow -Wstrict-overflow=n This option is only active when signed overflow is undefined. 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 that 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 that 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 requires, in particular when determining whether a loop will be executed at all. -Wstrict-overflow=1 Warn about cases that are both questionable and easy to avoid. For example the compiler simplifies x + 1 > x 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 signed integer overflow is undefined, 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 is simplified to x > 0. -Wstrict-overflow=4 Also warn about other simplifications not covered by the above cases. For example: (x * 10) / 5 is 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 is 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 gives a very large number of false positives. -Wstringop-overflow -Wstringop-overflow=type Warn for calls to string manipulation functions such as memcpy and strcpy that are determined to overflow the destination buffer. The optional argument is one greater than the type of Object Size Checking to perform to determine the size of the destination. See Object Size Checking. The argument is meaningful only for functions that operate on character arrays but not for raw memory functions like memcpy which always make use of Object Size type-0. The option also warns for calls that specify a size in excess of the largest possible object or at most SIZE_MAX / 2 bytes. The option produces the best results with optimization enabled but can detect a small subset of simple buffer overflows even without optimization in calls to the GCC built-in functions like __builtin_memcpy that correspond to the standard functions. In any case, the option warns about just a subset of buffer overflows detected by the corresponding overflow checking built-ins. For example, the option will issue a warning for the strcpy call below because it copies at least 5 characters (the string "blue" including the terminating NUL) into the buffer of size 4. enum Color { blue, purple, yellow }; const char* f (enum Color clr) { static char buf [4]; const char *str; switch (clr) { case blue: str = "blue"; break; case purple: str = "purple"; break; case yellow: str = "yellow"; break; } return strcpy (buf, str); // warning here } Option -Wstringop-overflow=2 is enabled by default. -Wstringop-overflow -Wstringop-overflow=1 The -Wstringop-overflow=1 option uses type-zero Object Size Checking to determine the sizes of destination objects. This is the default setting of the option. At this setting the option will not warn for writes past the end of subobjects of larger objects accessed by pointers unless the size of the largest surrounding object is known. When the destination may be one of several objects it is assumed to be the largest one of them. On Linux systems, when optimization is enabled at this setting the option warns for the same code as when the _FORTIFY_SOURCE macro is defined to a non-zero value. -Wstringop-overflow=2 The -Wstringop-overflow=2 option uses type-one Object Size Checking to determine the sizes of destination objects. At this setting the option will warn about overflows when writing to members of the largest complete objects whose exact size is known. It will, however, not warn for excessive writes to the same members of unknown objects referenced by pointers since they may point to arrays containing unknown numbers of elements. -Wstringop-overflow=3 The -Wstringop-overflow=3 option uses type-two Object Size Checking to determine the sizes of destination objects. At this setting the option warns about overflowing the smallest object or data member. This is the most restrictive setting of the option that may result in warnings for safe code. -Wstringop-overflow=4 The -Wstringop-overflow=4 option uses type-three Object Size Checking to determine the sizes of destination objects. At this setting the option will warn about overflowing any data members, and when the destination is one of several objects it uses the size of the largest of them to decide whether to issue a warning. Similarly to -Wstringop-overflow=3 this setting of the option may result in warnings for benign code. -Wstringop-truncation Warn for calls to bounded string manipulation functions such as strncat, strncpy, and stpncpy that may either truncate the copied string or leave the destination unchanged. In the following example, the call to strncat specifies a bound that is less than the length of the source string. As a result, the copy of the source will be truncated and so the call is diagnosed. To avoid the warning use bufsize - strlen (buf) - 1) as the bound. void append (char *buf, size_t bufsize) { strncat (buf, ".txt", 3); } As another example, the following call to strncpy results in copying to d just the characters preceding the terminating NUL, without appending the NUL to the end. Assuming the result of strncpy is necessarily a NUL-terminated string is a common mistake, and so the call is diagnosed. To avoid the warning when the result is not expected to be NUL-terminated, call memcpy instead. void copy (char *d, const char *s) { strncpy (d, s, strlen (s)); } In the following example, the call to strncpy specifies the size of the destination buffer as the bound. If the length of the source string is equal to or greater than this size the result of the copy will not be NUL-terminated. Therefore, the call is also diagnosed. To avoid the warning, specify sizeof buf - 1 as the bound and set the last element of the buffer to NUL. void copy (const char *s) { char buf[80]; strncpy (buf, s, sizeof buf); … } In situations where a character array is intended to store a sequence of bytes with no terminating NUL such an array may be annotated with attribute nonstring to avoid this warning. Such arrays, however, are not suitable arguments to functions that expect NUL-terminated strings. To help detect accidental misuses of such arrays GCC issues warnings unless it can prove that the use is safe. See Common Variable Attributes. -Wsuggest-attribute=[pure|const|noreturn|format|cold|malloc] Warn for cases where adding an attribute may be beneficial. The attributes currently supported are listed below. -Wsuggest-attribute=pure -Wsuggest-attribute=const -Wsuggest-attribute=noreturn -Wmissing-noreturn -Wsuggest-attribute=malloc Warn about functions that might be candidates for attributes pure, const or noreturn or malloc. The compiler only warns for functions visible in other compilation units or (in the case of pure and const) if it cannot prove that the function returns normally. A function returns normally if it doesn't contain an infinite loop or return abnormally by throwing, calling abort or trapping. This analysis requires option -fipa-pure-const, which is enabled by default at -O and higher. Higher optimization levels improve the accuracy of the analysis. -Wsuggest-attribute=format -Wmissing-format-attribute Warn about function pointers that might be candidates for format attributes. Note these are only possible candidates, not absolute ones. GCC guesses 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 also warns about function definitions that might be candidates for format attributes. Again, these are only possible candidates. GCC guesses 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. -Wsuggest-attribute=cold Warn about functions that might be candidates for cold attribute. This is based on static detection and generally will only warn about functions which always leads to a call to another cold function such as wrappers of C++ throw or fatal error reporting functions leading to abort. -Wsuggest-final-types Warn about types with virtual methods where code quality would be improved if the type were declared with the C++11 final specifier, or, if possible, declared in an anonymous namespace. This allows GCC to more aggressively devirtualize the polymorphic calls. This warning is more effective with link time optimization, where the information about the class hierarchy graph is more complete. -Wsuggest-final-methods Warn about virtual methods where code quality would be improved if the method were declared with the C++11 final specifier, or, if possible, its type were declared in an anonymous namespace or with the final specifier. This warning is more effective with link-time optimization, where the information about the class hierarchy graph is more complete. It is recommended to first consider suggestions of -Wsuggest-final-types and then rebuild with new annotations. -Wsuggest-override Warn about overriding virtual functions that are not marked with the override keyword. -Walloc-zero Warn about calls to allocation functions decorated with attribute alloc_size that specify zero bytes, including those to the built-in forms of the functions aligned_alloc, alloca, calloc, malloc, and realloc. Because the behavior of these functions when called with a zero size differs among implementations (and in the case of realloc has been deprecated) relying on it may result in subtle portability bugs and should be avoided. -Walloc-size-larger-than=byte-size Warn about calls to functions decorated with attribute alloc_size that attempt to allocate objects larger than the specified number of bytes, or where the result of the size computation in an integer type with infinite precision would exceed the value of 'PTRDIFF_MAX' on the target. -Walloc-size-larger-than='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default. Warnings controlled by the option can be disabled either by specifying byte-size of 'SIZE_MAX' or more or by -Wno-alloc-size-larger-than. See Function Attributes. -Wno-alloc-size-larger-than Disable -Walloc-size-larger-than= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Walloc-size-larger-than='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -Walloca This option warns on all uses of alloca in the source. -Walloca-larger-than=byte-size This option warns on calls to alloca with an integer argument whose value is either zero, or that is not bounded by a controlling predicate that limits its value to at most byte-size. It also warns for calls to alloca where the bound value is unknown. Arguments of non-integer types are considered unbounded even if they appear to be constrained to the expected range. For example, a bounded case of alloca could be: void func (size_t n) { void *p; if (n <= 1000) p = alloca (n); else p = malloc (n); f (p); } In the above example, passing -Walloca-larger-than=1000 would not issue a warning because the call to alloca is known to be at most 1000 bytes. However, if -Walloca-larger-than=500 were passed, the compiler would emit a warning. Unbounded uses, on the other hand, are uses of alloca with no controlling predicate constraining its integer argument. For example: void func () { void *p = alloca (n); f (p); } If -Walloca-larger-than=500 were passed, the above would trigger a warning, but this time because of the lack of bounds checking. Note, that even seemingly correct code involving signed integers could cause a warning: void func (signed int n) { if (n < 500) { p = alloca (n); f (p); } } In the above example, n could be negative, causing a larger than expected argument to be implicitly cast into the alloca call. This option also warns when alloca is used in a loop. -Walloca-larger-than='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default but is usually only effective when -ftree-vrp is active (default for -O2 and above). See also -Wvla-larger-than='byte-size'. -Wno-alloca-larger-than Disable -Walloca-larger-than= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Walloca-larger-than='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -Warray-bounds -Warray-bounds=n This option is only active when -ftree-vrp is active (default for -O2 and above). It warns about subscripts to arrays that are always out of bounds. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Warray-bounds=1 This is the warning level of -Warray-bounds and is enabled by -Wall; higher levels are not, and must be explicitly requested. -Warray-bounds=2 This warning level also warns about out of bounds access for arrays at the end of a struct and for arrays accessed through pointers. This warning level may give a larger number of false positives and is deactivated by default. -Wattribute-alias=n -Wno-attribute-alias Warn about declarations using the alias and similar attributes whose target is incompatible with the type of the alias. See Declaring Attributes of Functions. -Wattribute-alias=1 The default warning level of the -Wattribute-alias option diagnoses incompatibilities between the type of the alias declaration and that of its target. Such incompatibilities are typically indicative of bugs. -Wattribute-alias=2 At this level -Wattribute-alias also diagnoses cases where the attributes of the alias declaration are more restrictive than the attributes applied to its target. These mismatches can potentially result in incorrect code generation. In other cases they may be benign and could be resolved simply by adding the missing attribute to the target. For comparison, see the -Wmissing-attributes option, which controls diagnostics when the alias declaration is less restrictive than the target, rather than more restrictive. Attributes considered include alloc_align, alloc_size, cold, const, hot, leaf, malloc, nonnull, noreturn, nothrow, pure, returns_nonnull, and returns_twice. -Wattribute-alias is equivalent to -Wattribute-alias=1. This is the default. You can disable these warnings with either -Wno-attribute-alias or -Wattribute-alias=0. -Wbool-compare Warn about boolean expression compared with an integer value different from true/false. For instance, the following comparison is always false: int n = 5; … if ((n > 1) == 2) { … } This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wbool-operation Warn about suspicious operations on expressions of a boolean type. For instance, bitwise negation of a boolean is very likely a bug in the program. For C, this warning also warns about incrementing or decrementing a boolean, which rarely makes sense. (In C++, decrementing a boolean is always invalid. Incrementing a boolean is invalid in C++17, and deprecated otherwise.) This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wduplicated-branches Warn when an if-else has identical branches. This warning detects cases like if (p != NULL) return 0; else return 0; It doesn't warn when both branches contain just a null statement. This warning also warn for conditional operators: int i = x ? *p : *p; -Wduplicated-cond Warn about duplicated conditions in an if-else-if chain. For instance, warn for the following code: if (p->q != NULL) { … } else if (p->q != NULL) { … } -Wframe-address Warn when the '__builtin_frame_address' or '__builtin_return_address' is called with an argument greater than 0. Such calls may return indeterminate values or crash the program. The warning is included in -Wall. -Wno-discarded-qualifiers (C and Objective-C only) Do not warn if type qualifiers on pointers are being discarded. Typically, the compiler warns if a const char * variable is passed to a function that takes a char * parameter. This option can be used to suppress such a warning. -Wno-discarded-array-qualifiers (C and Objective-C only) Do not warn if type qualifiers on arrays which are pointer targets are being discarded. Typically, the compiler warns if a const int (*)[] variable is passed to a function that takes a int (*)[] parameter. This option can be used to suppress such a warning. -Wno-incompatible-pointer-types (C and Objective-C only) Do not warn when there is a conversion between pointers that have incompatible types. This warning is for cases not covered by -Wno-pointer-sign, which warns for pointer argument passing or assignment with different signedness. -Wno-int-conversion (C and Objective-C only) Do not warn about incompatible integer to pointer and pointer to integer conversions. This warning is about implicit conversions; for explicit conversions the warnings -Wno-int-to-pointer-cast and -Wno-pointer-to-int-cast may be used. -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 does not warn about unknown pragmas in system headers—for that, -Wunknown-pragmas must also be used. -Wtautological-compare Warn if a self-comparison always evaluates to true or false. This warning detects various mistakes such as: int i = 1; … if (i > i) { … } This warning also warns about bitwise comparisons that always evaluate to true or false, for instance: if ((a & 16) == 10) { … } will always be false. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wtrampolines Warn about trampolines generated for pointers to nested functions. A trampoline is a small piece of data or code that is created at run time on the stack when the address of a nested function is taken, and is used to call the nested function indirectly. For some targets, it is made up of data only and thus requires no special treatment. But, for most targets, it is made up of code and thus requires the stack to be made executable in order for the program to work properly. -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 should 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. -Wtraditional (C and Objective-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 that 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 in ISO C it does not. * In traditional C, some preprocessor directives did not exist. Traditional preprocessors only considered 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 ignores 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 do not recognize #elif, so this option 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 . 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 causes serious problems. This is a subset of the possible conversion warnings; for the full set use -Wtraditional-conversion. * Use of ISO C style function definitions. This warning intentionally is not issued for prototype declarations or variadic functions because these ISO C features 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. -Wtraditional-conversion (C and Objective-C only) 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. -Wdeclaration-after-statement (C and Objective-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. See Mixed Declarations. -Wshadow Warn whenever a local variable or type declaration shadows another variable, parameter, type, class member (in C++), or instance variable (in Objective-C) or whenever a built-in function is shadowed. Note that in C++, the compiler warns if a local variable shadows an explicit typedef, but not if it shadows a struct/class/enum. Same as -Wshadow=global. -Wno-shadow-ivar (Objective-C only) Do not warn whenever a local variable shadows an instance variable in an Objective-C method. -Wshadow=global The default for -Wshadow. Warns for any (global) shadowing. -Wshadow=local Warn when a local variable shadows another local variable or parameter. This warning is enabled by -Wshadow=global. -Wshadow=compatible-local Warn when a local variable shadows another local variable or parameter whose type is compatible with that of the shadowing variable. In C++, type compatibility here means the type of the shadowing variable can be converted to that of the shadowed variable. The creation of this flag (in addition to -Wshadow=local) is based on the idea that when a local variable shadows another one of incompatible type, it is most likely intentional, not a bug or typo, as shown in the following example: for (SomeIterator i = SomeObj.begin(); i != SomeObj.end(); ++i) { for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i) { ... } ... } Since the two variable i in the example above have incompatible types, enabling only -Wshadow=compatible-local will not emit a warning. Because their types are incompatible, if a programmer accidentally uses one in place of the other, type checking will catch that and emit an error or warning. So not warning (about shadowing) in this case will not lead to undetected bugs. Use of this flag instead of -Wshadow=local can possibly reduce the number of warnings triggered by intentional shadowing. This warning is enabled by -Wshadow=local. -Wlarger-than=byte-size Warn whenever an object is defined whose size exceeds byte-size. -Wlarger-than='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default. Warnings controlled by the option can be disabled either by specifying byte-size of 'SIZE_MAX' or more or by -Wno-larger-than. -Wno-larger-than Disable -Wlarger-than= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Wlarger-than='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -Wframe-larger-than=byte-size Warn if the size of a function frame exceeds byte-size. The computation done to determine the stack frame size is approximate and not conservative. The actual requirements may be somewhat greater than byte-size even if you do not get a warning. In addition, any space allocated via alloca, variable-length arrays, or related constructs is not included by the compiler when determining whether or not to issue a warning. -Wframe-larger-than='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default. Warnings controlled by the option can be disabled either by specifying byte-size of 'SIZE_MAX' or more or by -Wno-frame-larger-than. -Wno-frame-larger-than Disable -Wframe-larger-than= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Wframe-larger-than='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -Wno-free-nonheap-object Do not warn when attempting to free an object that was not allocated on the heap. -Wstack-usage=byte-size Warn if the stack usage of a function might exceed byte-size. The computation done to determine the stack usage is conservative. Any space allocated via alloca, variable-length arrays, or related constructs is included by the compiler when determining whether or not to issue a warning. The message is in keeping with the output of -fstack-usage. * If the stack usage is fully static but exceeds the specified amount, it's: warning: stack usage is 1120 bytes * If the stack usage is (partly) dynamic but bounded, it's: warning: stack usage might be 1648 bytes * If the stack usage is (partly) dynamic and not bounded, it's: warning: stack usage might be unbounded -Wstack-usage='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default. Warnings controlled by the option can be disabled either by specifying byte-size of 'SIZE_MAX' or more or by -Wno-stack-usage. -Wno-stack-usage Disable -Wstack-usage= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Wstack-usage='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations Warn if the loop cannot be optimized because the compiler cannot assume anything on the bounds of the loop indices. With -funsafe-loop-optimizations warn if the compiler makes such assumptions. -Wno-pedantic-ms-format (MinGW targets only) When used in combination with -Wformat and -pedantic without GNU extensions, this option disables the warnings about non-ISO printf / scanf format width specifiers I32, I64, and I used on Windows targets, which depend on the MS runtime. -Waligned-new Warn about a new-expression of a type that requires greater alignment than the alignof(std::max_align_t) but uses an allocation function without an explicit alignment parameter. This option is enabled by -Wall. Normally this only warns about global allocation functions, but -Waligned-new=all also warns about class member allocation functions. -Wplacement-new -Wplacement-new=n Warn about placement new expressions with undefined behavior, such as constructing an object in a buffer that is smaller than the type of the object. For example, the placement new expression below is diagnosed because it attempts to construct an array of 64 integers in a buffer only 64 bytes large. char buf [64]; new (buf) int[64]; This warning is enabled by default. -Wplacement-new=1 This is the default warning level of -Wplacement-new. At this level the warning is not issued for some strictly undefined constructs that GCC allows as extensions for compatibility with legacy code. For example, the following new expression is not diagnosed at this level even though it has undefined behavior according to the C++ standard because it writes past the end of the one-element array. struct S { int n, a[1]; }; S *s = (S *)malloc (sizeof *s + 31 * sizeof s->a[0]); new (s->a)int [32](); -Wplacement-new=2 At this level, in addition to diagnosing all the same constructs as at level 1, a diagnostic is also issued for placement new expressions that construct an object in the last member of structure whose type is an array of a single element and whose size is less than the size of the object being constructed. While the previous example would be diagnosed, the following construct makes use of the flexible member array extension to avoid the warning at level 2. struct S { int n, a[]; }; S *s = (S *)malloc (sizeof *s + 32 * sizeof s->a[0]); new (s->a)int [32](); -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. In C++, warn also when an arithmetic operation involves NULL. This warning is also enabled by -Wpedantic. -Wpointer-compare Warn if a pointer is compared with a zero character constant. This usually means that the pointer was meant to be dereferenced. For example: const char *p = foo (); if (p == '\0') return 42; Note that the code above is invalid in C++11. This warning is enabled by default. -Wtype-limits Warn if a comparison is always true or always false due to the limited range of the data type, but do not warn for constant expressions. For example, warn if an unsigned variable is compared against zero with < or >=. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wabsolute-value (C and Objective-C only) Warn for calls to standard functions that compute the absolute value of an argument when a more appropriate standard function is available. For example, calling abs(3.14) triggers the warning because the appropriate function to call to compute the absolute value of a double argument is fabs. The option also triggers warnings when the argument in a call to such a function has an unsigned type. This warning can be suppressed with an explicit type cast and it is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wcomment -Wcomments 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. -Wtrigraphs Warn if any trigraphs are encountered that might change the meaning of the program. Trigraphs within comments are not warned about, except those that would form escaped newlines. 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'. -Wundef Warn if an undefined identifier is evaluated in an #if directive. Such identifiers are replaced with zero. -Wexpansion-to-defined Warn whenever 'defined' is encountered in the expansion of a macro (including the case where the macro is expanded by an '#if' directive). Such usage is not portable. This warning is also enabled by -Wpedantic and -Wextra. -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 also warns 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 the preprocessor reports 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 -Wno-endif-labels Do not warn whenever an #else or an #endif are followed by text. This sometimes happens in older programs with code of the form #if FOO … #else FOO … #endif FOO The second and third FOO should be in comments. This warning is on by default. -Wbad-function-cast (C and Objective-C only) Warn when a function call is cast to a non-matching type. For example, warn if a call to a function returning an integer type is cast to a pointer type. -Wc90-c99-compat (C and Objective-C only) Warn about features not present in ISO C90, but present in ISO C99. For instance, warn about use of variable length arrays, long long type, bool type, compound literals, designated initializers, and so on. This option is independent of the standards mode. Warnings are disabled in the expression that follows __extension__. -Wc99-c11-compat (C and Objective-C only) Warn about features not present in ISO C99, but present in ISO C11. For instance, warn about use of anonymous structures and unions, _Atomic type qualifier, _Thread_local storage-class specifier, _Alignas specifier, Alignof operator, _Generic keyword, and so on. This option is independent of the standards mode. Warnings are disabled in the expression that follows __extension__. -Wc11-c2x-compat (C and Objective-C only) Warn about features not present in ISO C11, but present in ISO C2X. For instance, warn about omitting the string in _Static_assert. This option is independent of the standards mode. Warnings are disabled in the expression that follows __extension__. -Wc++-compat (C and Objective-C only) 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. -Wc++11-compat (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about C++ constructs whose meaning differs between ISO C++ 1998 and ISO C++ 2011, e.g., identifiers in ISO C++ 1998 that are keywords in ISO C++ 2011. This warning turns on -Wnarrowing and is enabled by -Wall. -Wc++14-compat (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about C++ constructs whose meaning differs between ISO C++ 2011 and ISO C++ 2014. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wc++17-compat (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about C++ constructs whose meaning differs between ISO C++ 2014 and ISO C++ 2017. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -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 *. Also warn when making a cast that introduces a type qualifier in an unsafe way. For example, casting char ** to const char ** is unsafe, as in this example: /* p is char ** value. */ const char **q = (const char **) p; /* Assignment of readonly string to const char * is OK. */ *q = "string"; /* Now char** pointer points to read-only memory. */ **p = 'b'; -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. -Wcast-align=strict 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 * regardless of the target machine. -Wcast-function-type Warn when a function pointer is cast to an incompatible function pointer. In a cast involving function types with a variable argument list only the types of initial arguments that are provided are considered. Any parameter of pointer-type matches any other pointer-type. Any benign differences in integral types are ignored, like int vs. long on ILP32 targets. Likewise type qualifiers are ignored. The function type void (*) (void) is special and matches everything, which can be used to suppress this warning. In a cast involving pointer to member types this warning warns whenever the type cast is changing the pointer to member type. This warning is enabled by -Wextra. -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 produces a warning. These warnings 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 is just a nuisance. This is why we did not make -Wall request these warnings. When compiling C++, warn about the deprecated conversion from string literals to char *. This warning is enabled by default for C++ programs. -Wcatch-value -Wcatch-value=n (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about catch handlers that do not catch via reference. With -Wcatch-value=1 (or -Wcatch-value for short) warn about polymorphic class types that are caught by value. With -Wcatch-value=2 warn about all class types that are caught by value. With -Wcatch-value=3 warn about all types that are not caught by reference. -Wcatch-value is enabled by -Wall. -Wclobbered Warn for variables that might be changed by longjmp or vfork. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wconditionally-supported (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn for conditionally-supported (C++11 [intro.defs]) constructs. -Wconversion Warn for implicit conversions that may alter a value. This includes conversions between real and integer, like abs (x) when x is double; conversions between signed and unsigned, like unsigned ui = -1; and conversions to smaller types, like sqrtf (M_PI). Do not warn for explicit casts like abs ((int) x) and ui = (unsigned) -1, or if the value is not changed by the conversion like in abs (2.0). Warnings about conversions between signed and unsigned integers can be disabled by using -Wno-sign-conversion. For C++, also warn for confusing overload resolution for user-defined conversions; and conversions that never use a type conversion operator: conversions to void, the same type, a base class or a reference to them. Warnings about conversions between signed and unsigned integers are disabled by default in C++ unless -Wsign-conversion is explicitly enabled. -Wno-conversion-null (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Do not warn for conversions between NULL and non-pointer types. -Wconversion-null is enabled by default. -Wzero-as-null-pointer-constant (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when a literal '0' is used as null pointer constant. This can be useful to facilitate the conversion to nullptr in C++11. -Wsubobject-linkage (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn if a class type has a base or a field whose type uses the anonymous namespace or depends on a type with no linkage. If a type A depends on a type B with no or internal linkage, defining it in multiple translation units would be an ODR violation because the meaning of B is different in each translation unit. If A only appears in a single translation unit, the best way to silence the warning is to give it internal linkage by putting it in an anonymous namespace as well. The compiler doesn't give this warning for types defined in the main .C file, as those are unlikely to have multiple definitions. -Wsubobject-linkage is enabled by default. -Wdangling-else 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/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 issues 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 can belong to the enclosing if. The resulting code looks like this: { if (a) { if (b) foo (); else bar (); } } This warning is enabled by -Wparentheses. -Wdate-time Warn when macros __TIME__, __DATE__ or __TIMESTAMP__ are encountered as they might prevent bit-wise-identical reproducible compilations. -Wdelete-incomplete (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when deleting a pointer to incomplete type, which may cause undefined behavior at runtime. This warning is enabled by default. -Wuseless-cast (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn when an expression is casted to its own type. -Wempty-body Warn if an empty body occurs in an if, else or do while statement. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wenum-compare Warn about a comparison between values of different enumerated types. In C++ enumerated type mismatches in conditional expressions are also diagnosed and the warning is enabled by default. In C this warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wextra-semi (C++, Objective-C++ only) Warn about redundant semicolon after in-class function definition. -Wjump-misses-init (C, Objective-C only) Warn if a goto statement or a switch statement jumps forward across the initialization of a variable, or jumps backward to a label after the variable has been initialized. This only warns about variables that are initialized when they are declared. This warning is only supported for C and Objective-C; in C++ this sort of branch is an error in any case. -Wjump-misses-init is included in -Wc++-compat. It can be disabled with the -Wno-jump-misses-init option. -Wsign-compare Warn when a comparison between signed and unsigned values could produce an incorrect result when the signed value is converted to unsigned. In C++, this warning is also enabled by -Wall. In C, it is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wsign-conversion Warn for implicit conversions that may change the sign of an integer value, like assigning a signed integer expression to an unsigned integer variable. An explicit cast silences the warning. In C, this option is enabled also by -Wconversion. -Wfloat-conversion Warn for implicit conversions that reduce the precision of a real value. This includes conversions from real to integer, and from higher precision real to lower precision real values. This option is also enabled by -Wconversion. -Wno-scalar-storage-order Do not warn on suspicious constructs involving reverse scalar storage order. -Wsized-deallocation (C++ and Objective-C++ only) Warn about a definition of an unsized deallocation function void operator delete (void *) noexcept; void operator delete[] (void *) noexcept; without a definition of the corresponding sized deallocation function void operator delete (void *, std::size_t) noexcept; void operator delete[] (void *, std::size_t) noexcept; or vice versa. Enabled by -Wextra along with -fsized-deallocation. -Wsizeof-pointer-div Warn for suspicious divisions of two sizeof expressions that divide the pointer size by the element size, which is the usual way to compute the array size but won't work out correctly with pointers. This warning warns e.g. about sizeof (ptr) / sizeof (ptr[0]) if ptr is not an array, but a pointer. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wsizeof-pointer-memaccess Warn for suspicious length parameters to certain string and memory built-in functions if the argument uses sizeof. This warning triggers for example for memset (ptr, 0, sizeof (ptr)); if ptr is not an array, but a pointer, and suggests a possible fix, or about memcpy (&foo, ptr, sizeof (&foo));. -Wsizeof-pointer-memaccess also warns about calls to bounded string copy functions like strncat or strncpy that specify as the bound a sizeof expression of the source array. For example, in the following function the call to strncat specifies the size of the source string as the bound. That is almost certainly a mistake and so the call is diagnosed. void make_file (const char *name) { char path[PATH_MAX]; strncpy (path, name, sizeof path - 1); strncat (path, ".text", sizeof ".text"); … } The -Wsizeof-pointer-memaccess option is enabled by -Wall. -Wsizeof-array-argument Warn when the sizeof operator is applied to a parameter that is declared as an array in a function definition. This warning is enabled by default for C and C++ programs. -Wmemset-elt-size Warn for suspicious calls to the memset built-in function, if the first argument references an array, and the third argument is a number equal to the number of elements, but not equal to the size of the array in memory. This indicates that the user has omitted a multiplication by the element size. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wmemset-transposed-args Warn for suspicious calls to the memset built-in function where the second argument is not zero and the third argument is zero. For example, the call memset (buf, sizeof buf, 0) is diagnosed because memset (buf, 0, sizeof buf) was meant instead. The diagnostic is only emitted if the third argument is a literal zero. Otherwise, if it is an expression that is folded to zero, or a cast of zero to some type, it is far less likely that the arguments have been mistakenly transposed and no warning is emitted. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -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. -Waddress-of-packed-member Warn when the address of packed member of struct or union is taken, which usually results in an unaligned pointer value. This is enabled by default. -Wlogical-op Warn about suspicious uses of logical operators in expressions. This includes using logical operators in contexts where a bit-wise operator is likely to be expected. Also warns when the operands of a logical operator are the same: extern int a; if (a < 0 && a < 0) { … } -Wlogical-not-parentheses Warn about logical not used on the left hand side operand of a comparison. This option does not warn if the right operand is considered to be a boolean expression. Its purpose is to detect suspicious code like the following: int a; … if (!a > 1) { … } It is possible to suppress the warning by wrapping the LHS into parentheses: if ((!a) > 1) { … } 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-aggressive-loop-optimizations Warn if in a loop with constant number of iterations the compiler detects undefined behavior in some statement during one or more of the iterations. -Wno-attributes Do not warn if an unexpected __attribute__ is used, such as unrecognized attributes, function attributes applied to variables, etc. This does not stop errors for incorrect use of supported attributes. -Wno-builtin-declaration-mismatch Warn if a built-in function is declared with an incompatible signature or as a non-function, or when a built-in function declared with a type that does not include a prototype is called with arguments whose promoted types do not match those expected by the function. When -Wextra is specified, also warn when a built-in function that takes arguments is declared without a prototype. The -Wno-builtin-declaration-mismatch warning is enabled by default. To avoid the warning include the appropriate header to bring the prototypes of built-in functions into scope. For example, the call to memset below is diagnosed by the warning because the function expects a value of type size_t as its argument but the type of 32 is int. With -Wextra, the declaration of the function is diagnosed as well. extern void* memset (); void f (void *d) { memset (d, '\0', 32); } -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined Do not warn if certain built-in macros are redefined. This suppresses warnings for redefinition of __TIMESTAMP__, __TIME__, __DATE__, __FILE__, and __BASE_FILE__. -Wstrict-prototypes (C and Objective-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 that specifies the argument types.) -Wold-style-declaration (C and Objective-C only) Warn for obsolescent usages, according to the C Standard, in a declaration. For example, warn if storage-class specifiers like static are not the first things in a declaration. This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wold-style-definition (C and Objective-C only) Warn if an old-style function definition is used. A warning is given even if there is a previous prototype. -Wmissing-parameter-type (C and Objective-C only) A function parameter is declared without a type specifier in K&R-style functions: void foo(bar) { } This warning is also enabled by -Wextra. -Wmissing-prototypes (C and Objective-C only) Warn if a global function is defined without a previous prototype declaration. This warning is issued even if the definition itself provides a prototype. Use this option to detect global functions that do not have a matching prototype declaration in a header file. This option is not valid for C++ because all function declarations provide prototypes and a non-matching declaration declares an overload rather than conflict with an earlier declaration. Use -Wmissing-declarations to detect missing declarations in C++. -Wmissing-declarations 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. In C, no warnings are issued for functions with previous non-prototype declarations; use -Wmissing-prototypes to detect missing prototypes. In C++, no warnings are issued for function templates, or for inline functions, or for functions in anonymous namespaces. -Wmissing-field-initializers Warn if a structure's initializer has some fields missing. For example, the following code causes 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 does not trigger a warning: struct s { int f, g, h; }; struct s x = { .f = 3, .g = 4 }; In C this option does not warn about the universal zero initializer '{ 0 }': struct s { int f, g, h; }; struct s x = { 0 }; Likewise, in C++ this option does not warn about the empty { } initializer, for example: struct s { int f, g, h; }; s x = { }; This warning is included in -Wextra. To get other -Wextra warnings without this one, use -Wextra -Wno-missing-field-initializers. -Wno-multichar Do not warn if a multicharacter constant (''FOOF'') 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. -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 that have not been normalized; this option controls that warning. There are four levels of warning supported by GCC. The default is -Wnormalized=nfc, which warns about any identifier that is not in the ISO 10646 “C” normalized form, NFC. NFC is the recommended form for most uses. It is equivalent to -Wnormalized. Unfortunately, there are some characters allowed in identifiers by ISO C and ISO C++ that, when turned into NFC, are not allowed in 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 or -Wno-normalized. You should only do this if you are 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”, displays just like a regular n that 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 warns 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 cannot be fixed to display these characters distinctly. -Wno-attribute-warning Do not warn about usage of functions (see Function Attributes) declared with warning attribute. By default, this warning is enabled. -Wno-attribute-warning can be used to disable the warning or -Wno-error=attribute-warning can be used to disable the error when compiled with -Werror flag. -Wno-deprecated Do not warn about usage of deprecated features. See Deprecated Features. -Wno-deprecated-declarations Do not warn about uses of functions (see Function Attributes), variables (see Variable Attributes), and types (see Type Attributes) marked as deprecated by using the deprecated attribute. -Wno-overflow Do not warn about compile-time overflow in constant expressions. -Wno-odr Warn about One Definition Rule violations during link-time optimization. Requires -flto-odr-type-merging to be enabled. Enabled by default. -Wopenmp-simd Warn if the vectorizer cost model overrides the OpenMP simd directive set by user. The -fsimd-cost-model=unlimited option can be used to relax the cost model. -Woverride-init (C and Objective-C only) Warn if an initialized field without side effects is overridden when using designated initializers (see Designated Initializers). This warning is included in -Wextra. To get other -Wextra warnings without this one, use -Wextra -Wno-override-init. -Woverride-init-side-effects (C and Objective-C only) Warn if an initialized field with side effects is overridden when using designated initializers (see Designated Initializers). This warning is enabled by default. -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 is 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; }; -Wpacked-bitfield-compat The 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 series of GCC ignore the packed attribute on bit-fields of type char. This has been fixed in GCC 4.4 but the change can lead to differences in the structure layout. GCC informs you when the offset of such a field has changed in GCC 4.4. For example there is no longer a 4-bit padding between field a and b in this structure: struct foo { char a:4; char b:8; } __attribute__ ((packed)); This warning is enabled by default. Use -Wno-packed-bitfield-compat to disable this warning. -Wpacked-not-aligned (C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++ only) Warn if a structure field with explicitly specified alignment in a packed struct or union is misaligned. For example, a warning will be issued on struct S, like, warning: alignment 1 of 'struct S' is less than 8, in this code: struct __attribute__ ((aligned (8))) S8 { char a[8]; }; struct __attribute__ ((packed)) S { struct S8 s8; }; This warning is enabled by -Wall. -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. -Wno-restrict Warn when an object referenced by a restrict-qualified parameter (or, in C++, a __restrict-qualified parameter) is aliased by another argument, or when copies between such objects overlap. For example, the call to the strcpy function below attempts to truncate the string by replacing its initial characters with the last four. However, because the call writes the terminating NUL into a[4], the copies overlap and the call is diagnosed. void foo (void) { char a[] = "abcd1234"; strcpy (a, a + 4); … } The -Wrestrict option detects some instances of simple overlap even without optimization but works best at -O2 and above. It is included in -Wall. -Wnested-externs (C and Objective-C only) Warn if an extern declaration is encountered within a function. -Wno-inherited-variadic-ctor Suppress warnings about use of C++11 inheriting constructors when the base class inherited from has a C variadic constructor; the warning is on by default because the ellipsis is not inherited. -Winline Warn if a function that is declared as inline cannot be inlined. Even with this option, the compiler does 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++ and Objective-C++ only) Suppress warnings from applying the offsetof macro to a non-POD type. According to the 2014 ISO C++ standard, applying offsetof to a non-standard-layout type is undefined. In existing C++ implementations, however, offsetof typically gives meaningful results. 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. -Wint-in-bool-context Warn for suspicious use of integer values where boolean values are expected, such as conditional expressions (?:) using non-boolean integer constants in boolean context, like if (a <= b ? 2 : 3). Or left shifting of signed integers in boolean context, like for (a = 0; 1 << a; a++);. Likewise for all kinds of multiplications regardless of the data type. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -Wno-int-to-pointer-cast Suppress warnings from casts to pointer type of an integer of a different size. In C++, casting to a pointer type of smaller size is an error. Wint-to-pointer-cast is enabled by default. -Wno-pointer-to-int-cast (C and Objective-C only) Suppress warnings from casts from a pointer to an integer type of a different size. -Winvalid-pch Warn if a precompiled header (see Precompiled Headers) is found in the search path but cannot be used. -Wlong-long Warn if long long type is used. This is enabled by either -Wpedantic or -Wtraditional in ISO C90 and C++98 modes. To inhibit the warning messages, use -Wno-long-long. -Wvariadic-macros Warn if variadic macros are used in ISO C90 mode, or if the GNU alternate syntax is used in ISO C99 mode. This is enabled by either -Wpedantic or -Wtraditional. To inhibit the warning messages, use -Wno-variadic-macros. -Wvarargs Warn upon questionable usage of the macros used to handle variable arguments like va_start. This is default. To inhibit the warning messages, use -Wno-varargs. -Wvector-operation-performance Warn if vector operation is not implemented via SIMD capabilities of the architecture. Mainly useful for the performance tuning. Vector operation can be implemented piecewise, which means that the scalar operation is performed on every vector element; in parallel, which means that the vector operation is implemented using scalars of wider type, which normally is more performance efficient; and as a single scalar, which means that vector fits into a scalar type. -Wno-virtual-move-assign Suppress warnings about inheriting from a virtual base with a non-trivial C++11 move assignment operator. This is dangerous because if the virtual base is reachable along more than one path, it is moved multiple times, which can mean both objects end up in the moved-from state. If the move assignment operator is written to avoid moving from a moved-from object, this warning can be disabled. -Wvla Warn if a variable-length array is used in the code. -Wno-vla prevents the -Wpedantic warning of the variable-length array. -Wvla-larger-than=byte-size If this option is used, the compiler will warn for declarations of variable-length arrays whose size is either unbounded, or bounded by an argument that allows the array size to exceed byte-size bytes. This is similar to how -Walloca-larger-than=byte-size works, but with variable-length arrays. Note that GCC may optimize small variable-length arrays of a known value into plain arrays, so this warning may not get triggered for such arrays. -Wvla-larger-than='PTRDIFF_MAX' is enabled by default but is typically only effective when -ftree-vrp is active (default for -O2 and above). See also -Walloca-larger-than=byte-size. -Wno-vla-larger-than Disable -Wvla-larger-than= warnings. The option is equivalent to -Wvla-larger-than='SIZE_MAX' or larger. -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. This warning is enabled by -Wall. -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 are unable to handle the code effectively. Often, the problem is that your code is too big or too complex; GCC refuses to optimize programs when the optimization itself is likely to take inordinate amounts of time. -Wpointer-sign (C and Objective-C only) 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 -Wpedantic, which can be disabled with -Wno-pointer-sign. -Wstack-protector This option is only active when -fstack-protector is active. It warns about functions that are not protected against stack smashing. -Woverlength-strings Warn about string constants that are longer than the “minimum maximum” length specified in the C standard. Modern compilers generally allow string constants that 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 C90, 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 -Wpedantic, and can be disabled with -Wno-overlength-strings. -Wunsuffixed-float-constants (C and Objective-C only) Issue a warning for any floating constant that does not have a suffix. When used together with -Wsystem-headers it warns about such constants in system header files. This can be useful when preparing code to use with the FLOAT_CONST_DECIMAL64 pragma from the decimal floating-point extension to C99. -Wno-designated-init (C and Objective-C only) Suppress warnings when a positional initializer is used to initialize a structure that has been marked with the designated_init attribute. -Whsa Issue a warning when HSAIL cannot be emitted for the compiled function or OpenMP construct. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Debugging Options, Previous: Diagnostic Message Formatting Options, Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Optimize Options Link: prev: Warning Options Next: Optimize Options, Previous: Warning Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.9 Options for Debugging Your Program To tell GCC to emit extra information for use by a debugger, in almost all cases you need only to add -g to your other options. GCC allows you to use -g with -O. The shortcuts taken by optimized code may occasionally be surprising: 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 are already at hand; some statements may execute in different places because they have been moved out of loops. Nevertheless it is possible to debug optimized output. This makes it reasonable to use the optimizer for programs that might have bugs. If you are not using some other optimization option, consider using -Og (see Optimize Options) with -g. With no -O option at all, some compiler passes that collect information useful for debugging do not run at all, so that -Og may result in a better debugging experience. -g Produce debugging information in the operating system's native format (stabs, COFF, XCOFF, or DWARF). 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 probably makes other debuggers crash or refuse to read the program. If you want to control for certain whether to generate the extra information, use -gstabs+, -gstabs, -gxcoff+, -gxcoff, or -gvms (see below). -ggdb Produce debugging information for use by GDB. This means to use the most expressive format available (DWARF, stabs, or the native format if neither of those are supported), including GDB extensions if at all possible. -gdwarf -gdwarf-version Produce debugging information in DWARF format (if that is supported). The value of version may be either 2, 3, 4 or 5; the default version for most targets is 4. DWARF Version 5 is only experimental. Note that with DWARF Version 2, some ports require and always use some non-conflicting DWARF 3 extensions in the unwind tables. Version 4 may require GDB 7.0 and -fvar-tracking-assignments for maximum benefit. GCC no longer supports DWARF Version 1, which is substantially different than Version 2 and later. For historical reasons, some other DWARF-related options such as -fno-dwarf2-cfi-asm) retain a reference to DWARF Version 2 in their names, but apply to all currently-supported versions of DWARF. -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 that is not understood by DBX. On System V Release 4 systems this option requires the GNU assembler. -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. -gxcoff Produce debugging information in XCOFF format (if that is supported). This is the format used by the DBX debugger on IBM RS/6000 systems. -gxcoff+ Produce debugging information in XCOFF 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, and may cause assemblers other than the GNU assembler (GAS) to fail with an error. -gvms Produce debugging information in Alpha/VMS debug format (if that is supported). This is the format used by DEBUG on Alpha/VMS systems. -glevel -ggdblevel -gstabslevel -gxcofflevel -gvmslevel 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, and line number tables, but no information about local variables. Level 3 includes extra information, such as all the macro definitions present in the program. Some debuggers support macro expansion when you use -g3. If you use multiple -g options, with or without level numbers, the last such option is the one that is effective. -gdwarf does not accept a concatenated debug level, to avoid confusion with -gdwarf-level. Instead use an additional -glevel option to change the debug level for DWARF. -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 increases the size of debugging information by as much as a factor of two. -fno-merge-debug-strings Direct the linker to not merge together strings in the debugging information that are identical in different object files. Merging is not supported by all assemblers or linkers. Merging decreases the size of the debug information in the output file at the cost of increasing link processing time. Merging is enabled by default. -fdebug-prefix-map=old=new When compiling files residing in directory old, record debugging information describing them as if the files resided in directory new instead. This can be used to replace a build-time path with an install-time path in the debug info. It can also be used to change an absolute path to a relative path by using . for new. This can give more reproducible builds, which are location independent, but may require an extra command to tell GDB where to find the source files. See also -ffile-prefix-map. -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, …), debugging information (-g) and the debug info format supports it. -fvar-tracking-assignments Annotate assignments to user variables early in the compilation and attempt to carry the annotations over throughout the compilation all the way to the end, in an attempt to improve debug information while optimizing. Use of -gdwarf-4 is recommended along with it. It can be enabled even if var-tracking is disabled, in which case annotations are created and maintained, but discarded at the end. By default, this flag is enabled together with -fvar-tracking, except when selective scheduling is enabled. -gsplit-dwarf Separate as much DWARF debugging information as possible into a separate output file with the extension .dwo. This option allows the build system to avoid linking files with debug information. To be useful, this option requires a debugger capable of reading .dwo files. -gdescribe-dies Add description attributes to some DWARF DIEs that have no name attribute, such as artificial variables, external references and call site parameter DIEs. -gpubnames Generate DWARF .debug_pubnames and .debug_pubtypes sections. -ggnu-pubnames Generate .debug_pubnames and .debug_pubtypes sections in a format suitable for conversion into a GDB index. This option is only useful with a linker that can produce GDB index version 7. -fdebug-types-section When using DWARF Version 4 or higher, type DIEs can be put into their own .debug_types section instead of making them part of the .debug_info section. It is more efficient to put them in a separate comdat section since the linker can then remove duplicates. But not all DWARF consumers support .debug_types sections yet and on some objects .debug_types produces larger instead of smaller debugging information. -grecord-gcc-switches -gno-record-gcc-switches This switch causes the command-line options used to invoke the compiler that may affect code generation to be appended to the DW_AT_producer attribute in DWARF debugging information. The options are concatenated with spaces separating them from each other and from the compiler version. It is enabled by default. See also -frecord-gcc-switches for another way of storing compiler options into the object file. -gstrict-dwarf Disallow using extensions of later DWARF standard version than selected with -gdwarf-version. On most targets using non-conflicting DWARF extensions from later standard versions is allowed. -gno-strict-dwarf Allow using extensions of later DWARF standard version than selected with -gdwarf-version. -gas-loc-support Inform the compiler that the assembler supports .loc directives. It may then use them for the assembler to generate DWARF2+ line number tables. This is generally desirable, because assembler-generated line-number tables are a lot more compact than those the compiler can generate itself. This option will be enabled by default if, at GCC configure time, the assembler was found to support such directives. -gno-as-loc-support Force GCC to generate DWARF2+ line number tables internally, if DWARF2+ line number tables are to be generated. gas-locview-support Inform the compiler that the assembler supports view assignment and reset assertion checking in .loc directives. This option will be enabled by default if, at GCC configure time, the assembler was found to support them. gno-as-locview-support Force GCC to assign view numbers internally, if -gvariable-location-views are explicitly requested. -gcolumn-info -gno-column-info Emit location column information into DWARF debugging information, rather than just file and line. This option is enabled by default. -gstatement-frontiers -gno-statement-frontiers This option causes GCC to create markers in the internal representation at the beginning of statements, and to keep them roughly in place throughout compilation, using them to guide the output of is_stmt markers in the line number table. This is enabled by default when compiling with optimization (-Os, -O, -O2, …), and outputting DWARF 2 debug information at the normal level. -gvariable-location-views -gvariable-location-views=incompat5 -gno-variable-location-views Augment variable location lists with progressive view numbers implied from the line number table. This enables debug information consumers to inspect state at certain points of the program, even if no instructions associated with the corresponding source locations are present at that point. If the assembler lacks support for view numbers in line number tables, this will cause the compiler to emit the line number table, which generally makes them somewhat less compact. The augmented line number tables and location lists are fully backward-compatible, so they can be consumed by debug information consumers that are not aware of these augmentations, but they won't derive any benefit from them either. This is enabled by default when outputting DWARF 2 debug information at the normal level, as long as there is assembler support, -fvar-tracking-assignments is enabled and -gstrict-dwarf is not. When assembler support is not available, this may still be enabled, but it will force GCC to output internal line number tables, and if -ginternal-reset-location-views is not enabled, that will most certainly lead to silently mismatching location views. There is a proposed representation for view numbers that is not backward compatible with the location list format introduced in DWARF 5, that can be enabled with -gvariable-location-views=incompat5. This option may be removed in the future, is only provided as a reference implementation of the proposed representation. Debug information consumers are not expected to support this extended format, and they would be rendered unable to decode location lists using it. -ginternal-reset-location-views -gno-internal-reset-location-views Attempt to determine location views that can be omitted from location view lists. This requires the compiler to have very accurate insn length estimates, which isn't always the case, and it may cause incorrect view lists to be generated silently when using an assembler that does not support location view lists. The GNU assembler will flag any such error as a view number mismatch. This is only enabled on ports that define a reliable estimation function. -ginline-points -gno-inline-points Generate extended debug information for inlined functions. Location view tracking markers are inserted at inlined entry points, so that address and view numbers can be computed and output in debug information. This can be enabled independently of location views, in which case the view numbers won't be output, but it can only be enabled along with statement frontiers, and it is only enabled by default if location views are enabled. -gz[=type] Produce compressed debug sections in DWARF format, if that is supported. If type is not given, the default type depends on the capabilities of the assembler and linker used. type may be one of 'none' (don't compress debug sections), 'zlib' (use zlib compression in ELF gABI format), or 'zlib-gnu' (use zlib compression in traditional GNU format). If the linker doesn't support writing compressed debug sections, the option is rejected. Otherwise, if the assembler does not support them, -gz is silently ignored when producing object files. -femit-struct-debug-baseonly Emit debug information for struct-like types only when the base name of the compilation source file matches the base name of file in which the struct is defined. This option substantially reduces the size of debugging information, but at significant potential loss in type information to the debugger. See -femit-struct-debug-reduced for a less aggressive option. See -femit-struct-debug-detailed for more detailed control. This option works only with DWARF debug output. -femit-struct-debug-reduced Emit debug information for struct-like types only when the base name of the compilation source file matches the base name of file in which the type is defined, unless the struct is a template or defined in a system header. This option significantly reduces the size of debugging information, with some potential loss in type information to the debugger. See -femit-struct-debug-baseonly for a more aggressive option. See -femit-struct-debug-detailed for more detailed control. This option works only with DWARF debug output. -femit-struct-debug-detailed[=spec-list] Specify the struct-like types for which the compiler generates debug information. The intent is to reduce duplicate struct debug information between different object files within the same program. This option is a detailed version of -femit-struct-debug-reduced and -femit-struct-debug-baseonly, which serves for most needs. A specification has the syntax ['dir:'|'ind:']['ord:'|'gen:']('any'|'sys'|'base'|'none') The optional first word limits the specification to structs that are used directly ('dir:') or used indirectly ('ind:'). A struct type is used directly when it is the type of a variable, member. Indirect uses arise through pointers to structs. That is, when use of an incomplete struct is valid, the use is indirect. An example is 'struct one direct; struct two * indirect;'. The optional second word limits the specification to ordinary structs ('ord:') or generic structs ('gen:'). Generic structs are a bit complicated to explain. For C++, these are non-explicit specializations of template classes, or non-template classes within the above. Other programming languages have generics, but -femit-struct-debug-detailed does not yet implement them. The third word specifies the source files for those structs for which the compiler should emit debug information. The values 'none' and 'any' have the normal meaning. The value 'base' means that the base of name of the file in which the type declaration appears must match the base of the name of the main compilation file. In practice, this means that when compiling foo.c, debug information is generated for types declared in that file and foo.h, but not other header files. The value 'sys' means those types satisfying 'base' or declared in system or compiler headers. You may need to experiment to determine the best settings for your application. The default is -femit-struct-debug-detailed=all. This option works only with DWARF debug output. -fno-dwarf2-cfi-asm Emit DWARF unwind info as compiler generated .eh_frame section instead of using GAS .cfi_* directives. -fno-eliminate-unused-debug-types Normally, when producing DWARF output, GCC avoids producing debug symbol output for types that are nowhere used in the source file being compiled. Sometimes it is useful to have GCC emit debugging information for all types declared in a compilation unit, regardless of whether or not they are actually used in that compilation unit, for example 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. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Optimize Options, Previous: Warning Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Instrumentation Options Link: prev: Debugging Options Next: Instrumentation Options, Previous: Debugging Options, Up: Invoking ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.10 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 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. Compiling multiple files at once to a single output file 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 in this section. Most optimizations are completely disabled at -O0 or if an -O level is not set on the command line, even if individual optimization flags are specified. Similarly, -Og suppresses many optimization passes. Depending on the target and how GCC was configured, a slightly different set of optimizations may be enabled at each -O level than those listed here. You can invoke GCC with -Q --help=optimizers to find out the exact set of optimizations that are enabled at each level. See Overall Options, for examples. -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: -fauto-inc-dec -fbranch-count-reg -fcombine-stack-adjustments -fcompare-elim -fcprop-registers -fdce -fdefer-pop -fdelayed-branch -fdse -fforward-propagate -fguess-branch-probability -fif-conversion -fif-conversion2 -finline-functions-called-once -fipa-profile -fipa-pure-const -fipa-reference -fipa-reference-addressable -fmerge-constants -fmove-loop-invariants -fomit-frame-pointer -freorder-blocks -fshrink-wrap -fshrink-wrap-separate -fsplit-wide-types -fssa-backprop -fssa-phiopt -ftree-bit-ccp -ftree-ccp -ftree-ch -ftree-coalesce-vars -ftree-copy-prop -ftree-dce -ftree-dominator-opts -ftree-dse -ftree-forwprop -ftree-fre -ftree-phiprop -ftree-pta -ftree-scev-cprop -ftree-sink -ftree-slsr -ftree-sra -ftree-ter -funit-at-a-time -O2 Optimize even more. GCC performs nearly all supported optimizations that do not involve a space-speed tradeoff. 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: -falign-functions -falign-jumps -falign-labels -falign-loops -fcaller-saves -fcode-hoisting -fcrossjumping -fcse-follow-jumps -fcse-skip-blocks -fdelete-null-pointer-checks -fdevirtualize -fdevirtualize-speculatively -fexpensive-optimizations -fgcse -fgcse-lm -fhoist-adjacent-loads -finline-small-functions -findirect-inlining -fipa-bit-cp -fipa-cp -fipa-icf -fipa-ra -fipa-sra -fipa-vrp -fisolate-erroneous-paths-dereference -flra-remat -foptimize-sibling-calls -foptimize-strlen -fpartial-inlining -fpeephole2 -freorder-blocks-algorithm=stc -freorder-blocks-and-partition -freorder-functions -frerun-cse-after-loop -fschedule-insns -fschedule-insns2 -fsched-interblock -fsched-spec -fstore-merging -fstrict-aliasing -fthread-jumps -ftree-builtin-call-dce -ftree-pre -ftree-switch-conversion -ftree-tail-merge -ftree-vrp Please note the warning under -fgcse about invoking -O2 on programs that use computed gotos. -O3 Optimize yet more. -O3 turns on all optimizations specified by -O2 and also turns on the following optimization flags: -fgcse-after-reload -finline-functions -fipa-cp-clone -floop-interchange -floop-unroll-and-jam -fpeel-loops -fpredictive-commoning -fsplit-paths -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns -ftree-loop-distribution -ftree-loop-vectorize -ftree-partial-pre -ftree-slp-vectorize -funswitch-loops -fvect-cost-model -fversion-loops-for-strides -O0 Reduce compilation time and make debugging produce the expected results. This is the default. -Os Optimize for size. -Os enables all -O2 optimizations except those that often increase code size: -falign-functions -falign-jumps -falign-labels -falign-loops -fprefetch-loop-arrays -freorder-blocks-algorithm=stc It also enables -finline-functions, causes the compiler to tune for code size rather than execution speed, and performs further optimizations designed to reduce code size. -Ofast Disregard strict standards compliance. -Ofast enables all -O3 optimizations. It also enables optimizations that are not valid for all standard-compliant programs. It turns on -ffast-math and the Fortran-specific -fstack-arrays, unless -fmax-stack-var-size is specified, and -fno-protect-parens. -Og Optimize debugging experience. -Og should be the optimization level of choice for the standard edit-compile-debug cycle, offering a reasonable level of optimization while maintaining fast compilation and a good debugging experience. It is a better choice than -O0 for producing debuggable code because some compiler passes that collect debug information are disabled at -O0. Like -O0, -Og completely disables a number of optimization passes so that individual options controlling them have no effect. Otherwise -Og enables all -O1 optimization flags except for those that may interfere with debugging: -fbranch-count-reg -fdelayed-branch -fif-conversion -fif-conversion2 -finline-functions-called-once -fmove-loop-invariants -fssa-phiopt -ftree-bit-ccp -ftree-pta -ftree-sra 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 is -fno-foo. In the table below, only one of the forms is listed—the one you typically 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-defer-pop For machines that must pop arguments after a function call, always pop the arguments as soon as each function returns. At levels -O1 and higher, -fdefer-pop is the default; this allows the compiler to let arguments accumulate on the stack for several function calls and pop them all at once. -fforward-propagate Perform a forward propagation pass on RTL. The pass tries to combine two instructions and checks if the result can be simplified. If loop unrolling is active, two passes are performed and the second is scheduled after loop unrolling. This option is enabled by default at optimization levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -ffp-contract=style -ffp-contract=off disables floating-point expression contraction. -ffp-contract=fast enables floating-point expression contraction such as forming of fused multiply-add operations if the target has native support for them. -ffp-contract=on enables floating-point expression contraction if allowed by the language standard. This is currently not implemented and treated equal to -ffp-contract=off. The default is -ffp-contract=fast. -fomit-frame-pointer Omit the frame pointer in functions that don't need one. This avoids the instructions to save, set up and restore the frame pointer; on many targets it also makes an extra register available. On some targets this flag has no effect because the standard calling sequence always uses a frame pointer, so it cannot be omitted. Note that -fno-omit-frame-pointer doesn't guarantee the frame pointer is used in all functions. Several targets always omit the frame pointer in leaf functions. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -foptimize-sibling-calls Optimize sibling and tail recursive calls. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -foptimize-strlen Optimize various standard C string functions (e.g. strlen, strchr or strcpy) and their _FORTIFY_SOURCE counterparts into faster alternatives. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3. -fno-inline Do not expand any functions inline apart from those marked with the always_inline attribute. This is the default when not optimizing. Single functions can be exempted from inlining by marking them with the noinline attribute. -finline-small-functions Integrate functions into their callers when their body is smaller than expected function call code (so overall size of program gets smaller). The compiler heuristically decides which functions are simple enough to be worth integrating in this way. This inlining applies to all functions, even those not declared inline. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -findirect-inlining Inline also indirect calls that are discovered to be known at compile time thanks to previous inlining. This option has any effect only when inlining itself is turned on by the -finline-functions or -finline-small-functions options. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -finline-functions Consider all functions for inlining, even if they are not declared inline. The compiler heuristically decides which functions are 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 levels -O3, -Os. Also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 at levels -O1, -O2, -O3 and -Os, but not -Og. -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. -fipa-sra Perform interprocedural scalar replacement of aggregates, removal of unused parameters and replacement of parameters passed by reference by parameters passed by value. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3 and -Os. -finline-limit=n By default, GCC limits the size of functions that can be inlined. This flag allows coarse control of this limit. n is the size of functions that can be inlined in number of pseudo instructions. 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 n/2. max-inline-insns-auto is set to n/2. See below for a documentation of the individual parameters controlling inlining and for the defaults of these parameters. Note: there may be no value to -finline-limit that results in default behavior. 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. -fno-keep-inline-dllexport This is a more fine-grained version of -fkeep-inline-functions, which applies only to functions that are declared using the dllexport attribute or declspec. See Declaring Attributes of Functions. -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 C90. In C++, emit any and all inline functions into the object file. -fkeep-static-functions Emit static functions into the object file, even if the function is never used. -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 a variable is referenced, regardless of whether or not optimization is turned on, use the -fno-keep-static-consts option. -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. -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 variable, including multiple instances of the same variable in recursive calls, to have distinct locations, so using this option results 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. -fmodulo-sched-allow-regmoves Perform more aggressive SMS-based modulo scheduling with register moves allowed. By setting this flag certain anti-dependences edges are deleted, which triggers the generation of reg-moves based on the life-range analysis. This option is effective only with -fmodulo-sched enabled. -fno-branch-count-reg Disable the optimization pass that scans for opportunities to use “decrement and branch” instructions on a count register instead of instruction sequences that decrement a register, compare it against zero, and 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. Note that the -fno-branch-count-reg option doesn't remove the decrement and branch instructions from the generated instruction stream introduced by other optimization passes. The default is -fbranch-count-reg at -O1 and higher, except for -Og. -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. -fthread-jumps Perform optimizations that 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. -fsplit-wide-types When using a type that occupies multiple registers, such as long long on a 32-bit system, split the registers apart and allocate them independently. This normally generates better code for those types, but may make debugging more difficult. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -fcse-follow-jumps In common subexpression elimination (CSE), 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 follows the jump when the condition tested is false. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fcse-skip-blocks This is similar to -fcse-follow-jumps, but causes CSE to follow jumps that 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. -frerun-cse-after-loop Re-run common subexpression elimination after loop optimizations are performed. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -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 run-time performance if you disable the global common subexpression elimination pass by adding -fno-gcse to the command line. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fgcse-lm When -fgcse-lm is enabled, global common subexpression elimination attempts to move loads that 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 -fgcse is enabled. -fgcse-sm When -fgcse-sm is enabled, a store motion pass is run after global common subexpression elimination. This pass attempts 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 clean up redundant spilling. Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -faggressive-loop-optimizations This option tells the loop optimizer to use language constraints to derive bounds for the number of iterations of a loop. This assumes that loop code does not invoke undefined behavior by for example causing signed integer overflows or out-of-bound array accesses. The bounds for the number of iterations of a loop are used to guide loop unrolling and peeling and loop exit test optimizations. This option is enabled by default. -funconstrained-commons This option tells the compiler that variables declared in common blocks (e.g. Fortran) may later be overridden with longer trailing arrays. This prevents certain optimizations that depend on knowing the array bounds. -fcrossjumping Perform cross-jumping transformation. This transformation unifies equivalent code and saves code size. The resulting code may or may not perform better than without cross-jumping. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fauto-inc-dec Combine increments or decrements of addresses with memory accesses. This pass is always skipped on architectures that do not have instructions to support this. Enabled by default at -O and higher on architectures that support this. -fdce Perform dead code elimination (DCE) on RTL. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fdse Perform dead store elimination (DSE) on RTL. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fif-conversion Attempt to transform conditional jumps into branch-less equivalents. This includes 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 -fif-conversion2. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, but not with -Og. -fif-conversion2 Use conditional execution (where available) to transform conditional jumps into branch-less equivalents. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os, but not with -Og. -fdeclone-ctor-dtor The C++ ABI requires multiple entry points for constructors and destructors: one for a base subobject, one for a complete object, and one for a virtual destructor that calls operator delete afterwards. For a hierarchy with virtual bases, the base and complete variants are clones, which means two copies of the function. With this option, the base and complete variants are changed to be thunks that call a common implementation. Enabled by -Os. -fdelete-null-pointer-checks Assume that programs cannot safely dereference null pointers, and that no code or data element resides at address zero. This option enables simple constant folding optimizations at all optimization levels. In addition, other optimization passes in GCC use this flag to control global dataflow analyses that eliminate useless checks for null pointers; these assume that a memory access to address zero always results in a trap, so that if a pointer is checked after it has already been dereferenced, it cannot be null. Note however that in some environments this assumption is not true. Use -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks to disable this optimization for programs that depend on that behavior. This option is enabled by default on most targets. On Nios II ELF, it defaults to off. On AVR, CR16, and MSP430, this option is completely disabled. Passes that use the dataflow information are enabled independently at different optimization levels. -fdevirtualize Attempt to convert calls to virtual functions to direct calls. This is done both within a procedure and interprocedurally as part of indirect inlining (-findirect-inlining) and interprocedural constant propagation (-fipa-cp). Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fdevirtualize-speculatively Attempt to convert calls to virtual functions to speculative direct calls. Based on the analysis of the type inheritance graph, determine for a given call the set of likely targets. If the set is small, preferably of size 1, change the call into a conditional deciding between direct and indirect calls. The speculative calls enable more optimizations, such as inlining. When they seem useless after further optimization, they are converted back into original form. -fdevirtualize-at-ltrans Stream extra information needed for aggressive devirtualization when running the link-time optimizer in local transformation mode. This option enables more devirtualization but significantly increases the size of streamed data. For this reason it is disabled by default. -fexpensive-optimizations Perform a number of minor optimizations that are relatively expensive. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -free Attempt to remove redundant extension instructions. This is especially helpful for the x86-64 architecture, which implicitly zero-extends in 64-bit registers after writing to their lower 32-bit half. Enabled for Alpha, AArch64 and x86 at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fno-lifetime-dse In C++ the value of an object is only affected by changes within its lifetime: when the constructor begins, the object has an indeterminate value, and any changes during the lifetime of the object are dead when the object is destroyed. Normally dead store elimination will take advantage of this; if your code relies on the value of the object storage persisting beyond the lifetime of the object, you can use this flag to disable this optimization. To preserve stores before the constructor starts (e.g. because your operator new clears the object storage) but still treat the object as dead after the destructor you, can use -flifetime-dse=1. The default behavior can be explicitly selected with -flifetime-dse=2. -flifetime-dse=0 is equivalent to -fno-lifetime-dse. -flive-range-shrinkage Attempt to decrease register pressure through register live range shrinkage. This is helpful for fast processors with small or moderate size register sets. -fira-algorithm=algorithm Use the specified coloring algorithm for the integrated register allocator. The algorithm argument can be 'priority', which specifies Chow's priority coloring, or 'CB', which specifies Chaitin-Briggs coloring. Chaitin-Briggs coloring is not implemented for all architectures, but for those targets that do support it, it is the default because it generates better code. -fira-region=region Use specified regions for the integrated register allocator. The region argument should be one of the following: 'all' Use all loops as register allocation regions. This can give the best results for machines with a small and/or irregular register set. 'mixed' Use all loops except for loops with small register pressure as the regions. This value usually gives the best results in most cases and for most architectures, and is enabled by default when compiling with optimization for speed (-O, -O2, …). 'one' Use all functions as a single region. This typically results in the smallest code size, and is enabled by default for -Os or -O0. -fira-hoist-pressure Use IRA to evaluate register pressure in the code hoisting pass for decisions to hoist expressions. This option usually results in smaller code, but it can slow the compiler down. This option is enabled at level -Os for all targets. -fira-loop-pressure Use IRA to evaluate register pressure in loops for decisions to move loop invariants. This option usually results in generation of faster and smaller code on machines with large register files (>= 32 registers), but it can slow the compiler down. This option is enabled at level -O3 for some targets. -fno-ira-share-save-slots Disable sharing of stack slots used for saving call-used hard registers living through a call. Each hard register gets a separate stack slot, and as a result function stack frames are larger. -fno-ira-share-spill-slots Disable sharing of stack slots allocated for pseudo-registers. Each pseudo-register that does not get a hard register gets a separate stack slot, and as a result function stack frames are larger. -flra-remat Enable CFG-sensitive rematerialization in LRA. Instead of loading values of spilled pseudos, LRA tries to rematerialize (recalculate) values if it is profitable. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -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, but not at -Og. -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. -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. -fno-sched-interblock Disable instruction scheduling across basic blocks, which is normally enabled when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher. -fno-sched-spec Disable speculative motion of non-load instructions, which is normally enabled when scheduling before register allocation, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-pressure Enable register pressure sensitive insn scheduling before register allocation. This only makes sense when scheduling before register allocation is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or at -O2 or higher. Usage of this option can improve the generated code and decrease its size by preventing register pressure increase above the number of available hard registers and subsequent spills in register allocation. -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 -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. -fno-sched-stalled-insns means that no insns are moved prematurely, -fsched-stalled-insns=0 means there is no limit on how many queued insns can be moved prematurely. -fsched-stalled-insns without a value is equivalent to -fsched-stalled-insns=1. -fsched-stalled-insns-dep -fsched-stalled-insns-dep=n Define how many insn groups (cycles) are examined for a dependency on a stalled insn that is a candidate for premature removal from the queue of stalled insns. This has an effect only during the second scheduling pass, and only if -fsched-stalled-insns is used. -fno-sched-stalled-insns-dep is equivalent to -fsched-stalled-insns-dep=0. -fsched-stalled-insns-dep without a value is equivalent to -fsched-stalled-insns-dep=1. -fsched2-use-superblocks When scheduling after register allocation, use superblock scheduling. This allows motion across basic block boundaries, resulting in 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. -fsched-group-heuristic Enable the group heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors the instruction that belongs to a schedule group. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-critical-path-heuristic Enable the critical-path heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors instructions on the critical path. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-spec-insn-heuristic Enable the speculative instruction heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors speculative instructions with greater dependency weakness. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-rank-heuristic Enable the rank heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors the instruction belonging to a basic block with greater size or frequency. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-last-insn-heuristic Enable the last-instruction heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors the instruction that is less dependent on the last instruction scheduled. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -fsched-dep-count-heuristic Enable the dependent-count heuristic in the scheduler. This heuristic favors the instruction that has more instructions depending on it. This is enabled by default when scheduling is enabled, i.e. with -fschedule-insns or -fschedule-insns2 or at -O2 or higher. -freschedule-modulo-scheduled-loops Modulo scheduling is performed before traditional scheduling. If a loop is modulo scheduled, later scheduling passes may change its schedule. Use this option to control that behavior. -fselective-scheduling Schedule instructions using selective scheduling algorithm. Selective scheduling runs instead of the first scheduler pass. -fselective-scheduling2 Schedule instructions using selective scheduling algorithm. Selective scheduling runs instead of the second scheduler pass. -fsel-sched-pipelining Enable software pipelining of innermost loops during selective scheduling. This option has no effect unless one of -fselective-scheduling or -fselective-scheduling2 is turned on. -fsel-sched-pipelining-outer-loops When pipelining loops during selective scheduling, also pipeline outer loops. This option has no effect unless -fsel-sched-pipelining is turned on. -fsemantic-interposition Some object formats, like ELF, allow interposing of symbols by the dynamic linker. This means that for symbols exported from the DSO, the compiler cannot perform interprocedural propagation, inlining and other optimizations in anticipation that the function or variable in question may change. While this feature is useful, for example, to rewrite memory allocation functions by a debugging implementation, it is expensive in the terms of code quality. With -fno-semantic-interposition the compiler assumes that if interposition happens for functions the overwriting function will have precisely the same semantics (and side effects). Similarly if interposition happens for variables, the constructor of the variable will be the same. The flag has no effect for functions explicitly declared inline (where it is never allowed for interposition to change semantics) and for symbols explicitly declared weak. -fshrink-wrap Emit function prologues only before parts of the function that need it, rather than at the top of the function. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -fshrink-wrap-separate Shrink-wrap separate parts of the prologue and epilogue separately, so that those parts are only executed when needed. This option is on by default, but has no effect unless -fshrink-wrap is also turned on and the target supports this. -fcaller-saves Enable allocation of values to registers that are 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. 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. -fcombine-stack-adjustments Tracks stack adjustments (pushes and pops) and stack memory references and then tries to find ways to combine them. Enabled by default at -O1 and higher. -fipa-ra Use caller save registers for allocation if those registers are not used by any called function. In that case it is not necessary to save and restore them around calls. This is only possible if called functions are part of same compilation unit as current function and they are compiled before it. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os, however the option is disabled if generated code will be instrumented for profiling (-p, or -pg) or if callee's register usage cannot be known exactly (this happens on targets that do not expose prologues and epilogues in RTL). -fconserve-stack Attempt to minimize stack usage. The compiler attempts to use less stack space, even if that makes the program slower. This option implies setting the large-stack-frame parameter to 100 and the large-stack-frame-growth parameter to 400. -ftree-reassoc Perform reassociation on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -fcode-hoisting Perform code hoisting. Code hoisting tries to move the evaluation of expressions executed on all paths to the function exit as early as possible. This is especially useful as a code size optimization, but it often helps for code speed as well. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher. -ftree-pre Perform partial redundancy elimination (PRE) on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and -O3. -ftree-partial-pre Make partial redundancy elimination (PRE) more aggressive. This flag is enabled by default at -O3. -ftree-forwprop Perform forward propagation on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -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 is faster than PRE, though it exposes fewer redundancies. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -ftree-phiprop Perform hoisting of loads from conditional pointers on trees. This pass is enabled by default at -O and higher. -fhoist-adjacent-loads Speculatively hoist loads from both branches of an if-then-else if the loads are from adjacent locations in the same structure and the target architecture has a conditional move instruction. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 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. -fipa-pure-const Discover which functions are pure or constant. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fipa-reference Discover which static variables do not escape the compilation unit. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fipa-reference-addressable Discover read-only, write-only and non-addressable static variables. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fipa-stack-alignment Reduce stack alignment on call sites if possible. Enabled by default. -fipa-pta Perform interprocedural pointer analysis and interprocedural modification and reference analysis. This option can cause excessive memory and compile-time usage on large compilation units. It is not enabled by default at any optimization level. -fipa-profile Perform interprocedural profile propagation. The functions called only from cold functions are marked as cold. Also functions executed once (such as cold, noreturn, static constructors or destructors) are identified. Cold functions and loop less parts of functions executed once are then optimized for size. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fipa-cp Perform interprocedural constant propagation. This optimization analyzes the program to determine when values passed to functions are constants and then optimizes accordingly. This optimization can substantially increase performance if the application has constants passed to functions. This flag is enabled by default at -O2, -Os and -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -fipa-cp-clone Perform function cloning to make interprocedural constant propagation stronger. When enabled, interprocedural constant propagation performs function cloning when externally visible function can be called with constant arguments. Because this optimization can create multiple copies of functions, it may significantly increase code size (see --param ipcp-unit-growth=value). This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -fipa-bit-cp When enabled, perform interprocedural bitwise constant propagation. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. It requires that -fipa-cp is enabled. -fipa-vrp When enabled, perform interprocedural propagation of value ranges. This flag is enabled by default at -O2. It requires that -fipa-cp is enabled. -fipa-icf Perform Identical Code Folding for functions and read-only variables. The optimization reduces code size and may disturb unwind stacks by replacing a function by equivalent one with a different name. The optimization works more effectively with link-time optimization enabled. Although the behavior is similar to the Gold Linker's ICF optimization, GCC ICF works on different levels and thus the optimizations are not same - there are equivalences that are found only by GCC and equivalences found only by Gold. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and -Os. -flive-patching=level Control GCC's optimizations to produce output suitable for live-patching. If the compiler's optimization uses a function's body or information extracted from its body to optimize/change another function, the latter is called an impacted function of the former. If a function is patched, its impacted functions should be patched too. The impacted functions are determined by the compiler's interprocedural optimizations. For example, a caller is impacted when inlining a function into its caller, cloning a function and changing its caller to call this new clone, or extracting a function's pureness/constness information to optimize its direct or indirect callers, etc. Usually, the more IPA optimizations enabled, the larger the number of impacted functions for each function. In order to control the number of impacted functions and more easily compute the list of impacted function, IPA optimizations can be partially enabled at two different levels. The level argument should be one of the following: 'inline-clone' Only enable inlining and cloning optimizations, which includes inlining, cloning, interprocedural scalar replacement of aggregates and partial inlining. As a result, when patching a function, all its callers and its clones' callers are impacted, therefore need to be patched as well. -flive-patching=inline-clone disables the following optimization flags: -fwhole-program -fipa-pta -fipa-reference -fipa-ra -fipa-icf -fipa-icf-functions -fipa-icf-variables -fipa-bit-cp -fipa-vrp -fipa-pure-const -fipa-reference-addressable -fipa-stack-alignment 'inline-only-static' Only enable inlining of static functions. As a result, when patching a static function, all its callers are impacted and so need to be patched as well. In addition to all the flags that -flive-patching=inline-clone disables, -flive-patching=inline-only-static disables the following additional optimization flags: -fipa-cp-clone -fipa-sra -fpartial-inlining -fipa-cp When -flive-patching is specified without any value, the default value is inline-clone. This flag is disabled by default. Note that -flive-patching is not supported with link-time optimization (-flto). -fisolate-erroneous-paths-dereference Detect paths that trigger erroneous or undefined behavior due to dereferencing a null pointer. Isolate those paths from the main control flow and turn the statement with erroneous or undefined behavior into a trap. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher and depends on -fdelete-null-pointer-checks also being enabled. -fisolate-erroneous-paths-attribute Detect paths that trigger erroneous or undefined behavior due to a null value being used in a way forbidden by a returns_nonnull or nonnull attribute. Isolate those paths from the main control flow and turn the statement with erroneous or undefined behavior into a trap. This is not currently enabled, but may be enabled by -O2 in the future. -ftree-sink Perform forward store motion on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -ftree-bit-ccp Perform sparse conditional bit constant propagation on trees and propagate pointer alignment information. This pass only operates on local scalar variables and is enabled by default at -O1 and higher, except for -Og. It requires that -ftree-ccp is enabled. -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. -fssa-backprop Propagate information about uses of a value up the definition chain in order to simplify the definitions. For example, this pass strips sign operations if the sign of a value never matters. The flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -fssa-phiopt Perform pattern matching on SSA PHI nodes to optimize conditional code. This pass is enabled by default at -O1 and higher, except for -Og. -ftree-switch-conversion Perform conversion of simple initializations in a switch to initializations from a scalar array. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher. -ftree-tail-merge Look for identical code sequences. When found, replace one with a jump to the other. This optimization is known as tail merging or cross jumping. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher. The compilation time in this pass can be limited using max-tail-merge-comparisons parameter and max-tail-merge-iterations parameter. -ftree-dce Perform dead code elimination (DCE) on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O and higher. -ftree-builtin-call-dce Perform conditional dead code elimination (DCE) for calls to built-in functions that may set errno but are otherwise free of side effects. This flag is enabled by default at -O2 and higher if -Os is not also specified. -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-dse Perform dead store elimination (DSE) on trees. A dead store is a store into a memory location that is later overwritten by another store without any intervening loads. In this case the earlier store can be deleted. 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, 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 -floop-strip-mine -floop-block Perform loop nest optimizations. Same as -floop-nest-optimize. To use this code transformation, GCC has to be configured with --with-isl to enable the Graphite loop transformation infrastructure. -fgraphite-identity Enable the identity transformation for graphite. For every SCoP we generate the polyhedral representation and transform it back to gimple. Using -fgraphite-identity we can check the costs or benefits of the GIMPLE -> GRAPHITE -> GIMPLE transformation. Some minimal optimizations are also performed by the code generator isl, like index splitting and dead code elimination in loops. -floop-nest-optimize Enable the isl based loop nest optimizer. This is a generic loop nest optimizer based on the Pluto optimization algorithms. It calculates a loop structure optimized for data-locality and parallelism. This option is experimental. -floop-parallelize-all Use the Graphite data dependence analysis to identify loops that can be parallelized. Parallelize all the loops that can be analyzed to not contain loop carried dependences without checking that it is profitable to parallelize the loops. -ftree-coalesce-vars While transforming the program out of the SSA representation, attempt to reduce copying by coalescing versions of different user-defined variables, instead of just compiler temporaries. This may severely limit the ability to debug an optimized program compiled with -fno-var-tracking-assignments. In the negated form, this flag prevents SSA coalescing of user variables. This option is enabled by default if optimization is enabled, and it does very little otherwise. -ftree-loop-if-convert Attempt to transform conditional jumps in the innermost loops to branch-less equivalents. The intent is to remove control-flow from the innermost loops in order to improve the ability of the vectorization pass to handle these loops. This is enabled by default if vectorization is enabled. -ftree-loop-distribution Perform loop distribution. This flag can improve cache performance on big loop bodies and allow further loop optimizations, like parallelization or vectorization, to take place. For example, the loop DO I = 1, N A(I) = B(I) + C D(I) = E(I) * F ENDDO is transformed to DO I = 1, N A(I) = B(I) + C ENDDO DO I = 1, N D(I) = E(I) * F ENDDO This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns Perform loop distribution of patterns that can be code generated with calls to a library. This flag is enabled by default at -O3, and by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. This pass distributes the initialization loops and generates a call to memset zero. For example, the loop DO I = 1, N A(I) = 0 B(I) = A(I) + I ENDDO is transformed to DO I = 1, N A(I) = 0 ENDDO DO I = 1, N B(I) = A(I) + I ENDDO and the initialization loop is transformed into a call to memset zero. This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -floop-interchange Perform loop interchange outside of graphite. This flag can improve cache performance on loop nest and allow further loop optimizations, like vectorization, to take place. For example, the loop for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) for (int j = 0; j < N; j++) for (int k = 0; k < N; k++) c[i][j] = c[i][j] + a[i][k]*b[k][j]; is transformed to for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) for (int k = 0; k < N; k++) for (int j = 0; j < N; j++) c[i][j] = c[i][j] + a[i][k]*b[k][j]; This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -floop-unroll-and-jam Apply unroll and jam transformations on feasible loops. In a loop nest this unrolls the outer loop by some factor and fuses the resulting multiple inner loops. This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -ftree-loop-im Perform loop invariant motion on trees. This pass moves only invariants that are 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 loops for which determining number of iterations requires complicated analysis. Later optimizations then may determine the number easily. Useful especially in connection with unrolling. -ftree-scev-cprop Perform final value replacement. If a variable is modified in a loop in such a way that its value when exiting the loop can be determined using only its initial value and the number of loop iterations, replace uses of the final value by such a computation, provided it is sufficiently cheap. This reduces data dependencies and may allow further simplifications. Enabled by default at -O and higher. -fivopts Perform induction variable optimizations (strength reduction, induction variable merging and induction variable elimination) on trees. -ftree-parallelize-loops=n Parallelize loops, i.e., split their iteration space to run in n threads. This is only possible for loops whose iterations are independent and can be arbitrarily reordered. The optimization is only profitable on multiprocessor machines, for loops that are CPU-intensive, rather than constrained e.g. by memory bandwidth. This option implies -pthread, and thus is only supported on targets that have support for -pthread. -ftree-pta Perform function-local points-to analysis on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O1 and higher, except for -Og. -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 -O1 and higher, except for -Og. -fstore-merging Perform merging of narrow stores to consecutive memory addresses. This pass merges contiguous stores of immediate values narrower than a word into fewer wider stores to reduce the number of instructions. This is enabled by default at -O2 and higher as well as -Os. -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-slsr Perform straight-line strength reduction on trees. This recognizes related expressions involving multiplications and replaces them by less expensive calculations when possible. This is enabled by default at -O and higher. -ftree-vectorize Perform vectorization on trees. This flag enables -ftree-loop-vectorize and -ftree-slp-vectorize if not explicitly specified. -ftree-loop-vectorize Perform loop vectorization on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O3 and by -ftree-vectorize, -fprofile-use, and -fauto-profile. -ftree-slp-vectorize Perform basic block vectorization on trees. This flag is enabled by default at -O3 and by -ftree-vectorize, -fprofile-use, and -fauto-profile. -fvect-cost-model=model Alter the cost model used for vectorization. The model argument should be one of 'unlimited', 'dynamic' or 'cheap'. With the 'unlimited' model the vectorized code-path is assumed to be profitable while with the 'dynamic' model a runtime check guards the vectorized code-path to enable it only for iteration counts that will likely execute faster than when executing the original scalar loop. The 'cheap' model disables vectorization of loops where doing so would be cost prohibitive for example due to required runtime checks for data dependence or alignment but otherwise is equal to the 'dynamic' model. The default cost model depends on other optimization flags and is either 'dynamic' or 'cheap'. -fsimd-cost-model=model Alter the cost model used for vectorization of loops marked with the OpenMP simd directive. The model argument should be one of 'unlimited', 'dynamic', 'cheap'. All values of model have the same meaning as described in -fvect-cost-model and by default a cost model defined with -fvect-cost-model is used. -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. -fsplit-paths Split paths leading to loop backedges. This can improve dead code elimination and common subexpression elimination. This is enabled by default at -O3 and above. -fsplit-ivs-in-unroller Enables expression 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. A combination of -fweb and CSE is often sufficient to obtain the same effect. However, that is not reliable in cases where the loop body is more complicated than a single basic block. It also does not work at all on some architectures due to restrictions in the CSE pass. This optimization is enabled by default. -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller With this option, the compiler creates multiple copies of some local variables when unrolling a loop, which can result in superior code. -fpartial-inlining Inline parts of functions. This option has any effect only when inlining itself is turned on by the -finline-functions or -finline-small-functions options. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fpredictive-commoning Perform predictive commoning optimization, i.e., reusing computations (especially memory loads and stores) performed in previous iterations of loops. This option is enabled at level -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 level -Os. -fno-printf-return-value Do not substitute constants for known return value of formatted output functions such as sprintf, snprintf, vsprintf, and vsnprintf (but not printf of fprintf). This transformation allows GCC to optimize or even eliminate branches based on the known return value of these functions called with arguments that are either constant, or whose values are known to be in a range that makes determining the exact return value possible. For example, when -fprintf-return-value is in effect, both the branch and the body of the if statement (but not the call to snprint) can be optimized away when i is a 32-bit or smaller integer because the return value is guaranteed to be at most 8. char buf[9]; if (snprintf (buf, "%08x", i) >= sizeof buf) … The -fprintf-return-value option relies on other optimizations and yields best results with -O2 and above. It works in tandem with the -Wformat-overflow and -Wformat-truncation options. The -fprintf-return-value option is enabled by default. -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. -fno-guess-branch-probability Do not guess branch probabilities using heuristics. GCC uses 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 are 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. It is also possible to specify expected probability of the expression with __builtin_expect_with_probability built-in function. The default is -fguess-branch-probability at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -freorder-blocks Reorder basic blocks in the compiled function in order to reduce number of taken branches and improve code locality. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -freorder-blocks-algorithm=algorithm Use the specified algorithm for basic block reordering. The algorithm argument can be 'simple', which does not increase code size (except sometimes due to secondary effects like alignment), or 'stc', the “software trace cache” algorithm, which tries to put all often executed code together, minimizing the number of branches executed by making extra copies of code. The default is 'simple' at levels -O, -Os, and 'stc' 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 or unwind tables (on targets using setjump/longjump or target specific scheme), for linkonce sections, for functions with a user-defined section attribute and on any architecture that does not support named sections. When -fsplit-stack is used this option is not enabled by default (to avoid linker errors), but may be enabled explicitly (if using a working linker). Enabled for x86 at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -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. This option isn't effective unless you either provide profile feedback (see -fprofile-arcs for details) or manually annotate functions with hot or cold attributes (see Common Function Attributes). Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -fstrict-aliasing Allow 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() { union 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 works as expected. See Structures unions enumerations and bit-fields implementation. However, this code might not: int f() { union a_union t; int* ip; t.d = 3.0; ip = &t.i; return *ip; } Similarly, access by taking the address, casting the resulting pointer and dereferencing the result has undefined behavior, even if the cast uses a union type, e.g.: int f() { double d = 3.0; return ((union a_union *) &d)->i; } The -fstrict-aliasing option is enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -falign-functions -falign-functions=n -falign-functions=n:m -falign-functions=n:m:n2 -falign-functions=n:m:n2:m2 Align the start of functions to the next power-of-two greater than n, skipping up to m-1 bytes. This ensures that at least the first m bytes of the function can be fetched by the CPU without crossing an n-byte alignment boundary. If m is not specified, it defaults to n. Examples: -falign-functions=32 aligns functions to the next 32-byte boundary, -falign-functions=24 aligns to the next 32-byte boundary only if this can be done by skipping 23 bytes or less, -falign-functions=32:7 aligns to the next 32-byte boundary only if this can be done by skipping 6 bytes or less. The second pair of n2:m2 values allows you to specify a secondary alignment: -falign-functions=64:7:32:3 aligns to the next 64-byte boundary if this can be done by skipping 6 bytes or less, otherwise aligns to the next 32-byte boundary if this can be done by skipping 2 bytes or less. If m2 is not specified, it defaults to n2. Some assemblers only support this flag when n is a power of two; in that case, it is rounded up. -fno-align-functions and -falign-functions=1 are equivalent and mean that functions are not aligned. If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default. The maximum allowed n option value is 65536. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3. -flimit-function-alignment If this option is enabled, the compiler tries to avoid unnecessarily overaligning functions. It attempts to instruct the assembler to align by the amount specified by -falign-functions, but not to skip more bytes than the size of the function. -falign-labels -falign-labels=n -falign-labels=n:m -falign-labels=n:m:n2 -falign-labels=n:m:n2:m2 Align all branch targets to a power-of-two boundary. Parameters of this option are analogous to the -falign-functions option. -fno-align-labels and -falign-labels=1 are equivalent and mean that labels are not 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. The maximum allowed n option value is 65536. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3. -falign-loops -falign-loops=n -falign-loops=n:m -falign-loops=n:m:n2 -falign-loops=n:m:n2:m2 Align loops to a power-of-two boundary. If the loops are executed many times, this makes up for any execution of the dummy padding instructions. Parameters of this option are analogous to the -falign-functions option. -fno-align-loops and -falign-loops=1 are equivalent and mean that loops are not aligned. The maximum allowed n option value is 65536. If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3. -falign-jumps -falign-jumps=n -falign-jumps=n:m -falign-jumps=n:m:n2 -falign-jumps=n:m:n2:m2 Align branch targets to a power-of-two boundary, for branch targets where the targets can only be reached by jumping. In this case, no dummy operations need be executed. Parameters of this option are analogous to the -falign-functions option. -fno-align-jumps and -falign-jumps=1 are equivalent and mean that loops are not aligned. If n is not specified or is zero, use a machine-dependent default. The maximum allowed n option value is 65536. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3. -funit-at-a-time This option is left for compatibility reasons. -funit-at-a-time has no effect, while -fno-unit-at-a-time implies -fno-toplevel-reorder and -fno-section-anchors. Enabled by default. -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 are not removed. This option is intended to support existing code that relies on a particular ordering. For new code, it is better to use attributes when possible. -ftoplevel-reorder is the default at -O1 and higher, and also at -O0 if -fsection-anchors is explicitly requested. Additionally -fno-toplevel-reorder implies -fno-section-anchors. -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 no longer stay in a “home register”. Enabled by default with -funroll-loops. -fwhole-program Assume that the current compilation unit represents the 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 effect are optimized more aggressively by interprocedural optimizers. This option should not be used in combination with -flto. Instead relying on a linker plugin should provide safer and more precise information. -flto[=n] This option runs the standard link-time optimizer. When invoked with source code, it generates GIMPLE (one of GCC's internal representations) and writes it to special ELF sections in the object file. When the object files are linked together, all the function bodies are read from these ELF sections and instantiated as if they had been part of the same translation unit. To use the link-time optimizer, -flto and optimization options should be specified at compile time and during the final link. It is recommended that you compile all the files participating in the same link with the same options and also specify those options at link time. For example: gcc -c -O2 -flto foo.c gcc -c -O2 -flto bar.c gcc -o myprog -flto -O2 foo.o bar.o The first two invocations to GCC save a bytecode representation of GIMPLE into special ELF sections inside foo.o and bar.o. The final invocation reads the GIMPLE bytecode from foo.o and bar.o, merges the two files into a single internal image, and compiles the result as usual. Since both foo.o and bar.o are merged into a single image, this causes all the interprocedural analyses and optimizations in GCC to work across the two files as if they were a single one. This means, for example, that the inliner is able to inline functions in bar.o into functions in foo.o and vice-versa. Another (simpler) way to enable link-time optimization is: gcc -o myprog -flto -O2 foo.c bar.c The above generates bytecode for foo.c and bar.c, merges them together into a single GIMPLE representation and optimizes them as usual to produce myprog. The important thing to keep in mind is that to enable link-time optimizations you need to use the GCC driver to perform the link step. GCC automatically performs link-time optimization if any of the objects involved were compiled with the -flto command-line option. You can always override the automatic decision to do link-time optimization by passing -fno-lto to the link command. To make whole program optimization effective, it is necessary to make certain whole program assumptions. The compiler needs to know what functions and variables can be accessed by libraries and runtime outside of the link-time optimized unit. When supported by the linker, the linker plugin (see -fuse-linker-plugin) passes information to the compiler about used and externally visible symbols. When the linker plugin is not available, -fwhole-program should be used to allow the compiler to make these assumptions, which leads to more aggressive optimization decisions. When a file is compiled with -flto without -fuse-linker-plugin, the generated object file is larger than a regular object file because it contains GIMPLE bytecodes and the usual final code (see -ffat-lto-objects. This means that object files with LTO information can be linked as normal object files; if -fno-lto is passed to the linker, no interprocedural optimizations are applied. Note that when -fno-fat-lto-objects is enabled the compile stage is faster but you cannot perform a regular, non-LTO link on them. When producing the final binary, GCC only applies link-time optimizations to those files that contain bytecode. Therefore, you can mix and match object files and libraries with GIMPLE bytecodes and final object code. GCC automatically selects which files to optimize in LTO mode and which files to link without further processing. Generally, options specified at link time override those specified at compile time, although in some cases GCC attempts to infer link-time options from the settings used to compile the input files. If you do not specify an optimization level option -O at link time, then GCC uses the highest optimization level used when compiling the object files. Note that it is generally ineffective to specify an optimization level option only at link time and not at compile time, for two reasons. First, compiling without optimization suppresses compiler passes that gather information needed for effective optimization at link time. Second, some early optimization passes can be performed only at compile time and not at link time. There are some code generation flags preserved by GCC when generating bytecodes, as they need to be used during the final link. Currently, the following options and their settings are taken from the first object file that explicitly specifies them: -fPIC, -fpic, -fpie, -fcommon, -fexceptions, -fnon-call-exceptions, -fgnu-tm and all the -m target flags. Certain ABI-changing flags are required to match in all compilation units, and trying to override this at link time with a conflicting value is ignored. This includes options such as -freg-struct-return and -fpcc-struct-return. Other options such as -ffp-contract, -fno-strict-overflow, -fwrapv, -fno-trapv or -fno-strict-aliasing are passed through to the link stage and merged conservatively for conflicting translation units. Specifically -fno-strict-overflow, -fwrapv and -fno-trapv take precedence; and for example -ffp-contract=off takes precedence over -ffp-contract=fast. You can override them at link time. If LTO encounters objects with C linkage declared with incompatible types in separate translation units to be linked together (undefined behavior according to ISO C99 6.2.7), a non-fatal diagnostic may be issued. The behavior is still undefined at run time. Similar diagnostics may be raised for other languages. Another feature of LTO is that it is possible to apply interprocedural optimizations on files written in different languages: gcc -c -flto foo.c g++ -c -flto bar.cc gfortran -c -flto baz.f90 g++ -o myprog -flto -O3 foo.o bar.o baz.o -lgfortran Notice that the final link is done with g++ to get the C++ runtime libraries and -lgfortran is added to get the Fortran runtime libraries. In general, when mixing languages in LTO mode, you should use the same link command options as when mixing languages in a regular (non-LTO) compilation. If object files containing GIMPLE bytecode are stored in a library archive, say libfoo.a, it is possible to extract and use them in an LTO link if you are using a linker with plugin support. To create static libraries suitable for LTO, use gcc-ar and gcc-ranlib instead of ar and ranlib; to show the symbols of object files with GIMPLE bytecode, use gcc-nm. Those commands require that ar, ranlib and nm have been compiled with plugin support. At link time, use the flag -fuse-linker-plugin to ensure that the library participates in the LTO optimization process: gcc -o myprog -O2 -flto -fuse-linker-plugin a.o b.o -lfoo With the linker plugin enabled, the linker extracts the needed GIMPLE files from libfoo.a and passes them on to the running GCC to make them part of the aggregated GIMPLE image to be optimized. If you are not using a linker with plugin support and/or do not enable the linker plugin, then the objects inside libfoo.a are extracted and linked as usual, but they do not participate in the LTO optimization process. In order to make a static library suitable for both LTO optimization and usual linkage, compile its object files with -flto -ffat-lto-objects. Link-time optimizations do not require the presence of the whole program to operate. If the program does not require any symbols to be exported, it is possible to combine -flto and -fwhole-program to allow the interprocedural optimizers to use more aggressive assumptions which may lead to improved optimization opportunities. Use of -fwhole-program is not needed when linker plugin is active (see -fuse-linker-plugin). The current implementation of LTO makes no attempt to generate bytecode that is portable between different types of hosts. The bytecode files are versioned and there is a strict version check, so bytecode files generated in one version of GCC do not work with an older or newer version of GCC. Link-time optimization does not work well with generation of debugging information on systems other than those using a combination of ELF and DWARF. If you specify the optional n, the optimization and code generation done at link time is executed in parallel using n parallel jobs by utilizing an installed make program. The environment variable MAKE may be used to override the program used. The default value for n is 1. You can also specify -flto=jobserver to use GNU make's job server mode to determine the number of parallel jobs. This is useful when the Makefile calling GCC is already executing in parallel. You must prepend a '+' to the command recipe in the parent Makefile for this to work. This option likely only works if MAKE is GNU make. -flto-partition=alg Specify the partitioning algorithm used by the link-time optimizer. The value is either '1to1' to specify a partitioning mirroring the original source files or 'balanced' to specify partitioning into equally sized chunks (whenever possible) or 'max' to create new partition for every symbol where possible. Specifying 'none' as an algorithm disables partitioning and streaming completely. The default value is 'balanced'. While '1to1' can be used as an workaround for various code ordering issues, the 'max' partitioning is intended for internal testing only. The value 'one' specifies that exactly one partition should be used while the value 'none' bypasses partitioning and executes the link-time optimization step directly from the WPA phase. -flto-odr-type-merging Enable streaming of mangled types names of C++ types and their unification at link time. This increases size of LTO object files, but enables diagnostics about One Definition Rule violations. -flto-compression-level=n This option specifies the level of compression used for intermediate language written to LTO object files, and is only meaningful in conjunction with LTO mode (-flto). Valid values are 0 (no compression) to 9 (maximum compression). Values outside this range are clamped to either 0 or 9. If the option is not given, a default balanced compression setting is used. -fuse-linker-plugin Enables the use of a linker plugin during link-time optimization. This option relies on plugin support in the linker, which is available in gold or in GNU ld 2.21 or newer. This option enables the extraction of object files with GIMPLE bytecode out of library archives. This improves the quality of optimization by exposing more code to the link-time optimizer. This information specifies what symbols can be accessed externally (by non-LTO object or during dynamic linking). Resulting code quality improvements on binaries (and shared libraries that use hidden visibility) are similar to -fwhole-program. See -flto for a description of the effect of this flag and how to use it. This option is enabled by default when LTO support in GCC is enabled and GCC was configured for use with a linker supporting plugins (GNU ld 2.21 or newer or gold). -ffat-lto-objects Fat LTO objects are object files that contain both the intermediate language and the object code. This makes them usable for both LTO linking and normal linking. This option is effective only when compiling with -flto and is ignored at link time. -fno-fat-lto-objects improves compilation time over plain LTO, but requires the complete toolchain to be aware of LTO. It requires a linker with linker plugin support for basic functionality. Additionally, nm, ar and ranlib need to support linker plugins to allow a full-featured build environment (capable of building static libraries etc). GCC provides the gcc-ar, gcc-nm, gcc-ranlib wrappers to pass the right options to these tools. With non fat LTO makefiles need to be modified to use them. Note that modern binutils provide plugin auto-load mechanism. Installing the linker plugin into $libdir/bfd-plugins has the same effect as usage of the command wrappers (gcc-ar, gcc-nm and gcc-ranlib). The default is -fno-fat-lto-objects on targets with linker plugin support. -fcompare-elim After register allocation and post-register allocation instruction splitting, identify arithmetic instructions that compute processor flags similar to a comparison operation based on that arithmetic. If possible, eliminate the explicit comparison operation. This pass only applies to certain targets that cannot explicitly represent the comparison operation before register allocation is complete. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -fcprop-registers After register allocation and post-register allocation instruction splitting, perform a copy-propagation pass to try to reduce scheduling dependencies and occasionally eliminate the copy. Enabled at levels -O, -O2, -O3, -Os. -fprofile-correction Profiles collected using an instrumented binary for multi-threaded programs may be inconsistent due to missed counter updates. When this option is specified, GCC uses heuristics to correct or smooth out such inconsistencies. By default, GCC emits an error message when an inconsistent profile is detected. This option is enabled by -fauto-profile. -fprofile-use -fprofile-use=path Enable profile feedback-directed optimizations, and the following optimizations, many of which are generally profitable only with profile feedback available: -fbranch-probabilities -fprofile-values -funroll-loops -fpeel-loops -ftracer -fvpt -finline-functions -fipa-cp -fipa-cp-clone -fipa-bit-cp -fpredictive-commoning -fsplit-loops -funswitch-loops -fgcse-after-reload -ftree-loop-vectorize -ftree-slp-vectorize -fvect-cost-model=dynamic -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns -fprofile-reorder-functions Before you can use this option, you must first generate profiling information. See Instrumentation Options, for information about the -fprofile-generate option. By default, GCC emits an error message if the feedback profiles do not match the source code. This error can be turned into a warning by using -Wno-error=coverage-mismatch. Note this may result in poorly optimized code. Additionally, by default, GCC also emits a warning message if the feedback profiles do not exist (see -Wmissing-profile). If path is specified, GCC looks at the path to find the profile feedback data files. See -fprofile-dir. -fauto-profile -fauto-profile=path Enable sampling-based feedback-directed optimizations, and the following optimizations, many of which are generally profitable only with profile feedback available: -fbranch-probabilities -fprofile-values -funroll-loops -fpeel-loops -ftracer -fvpt -finline-functions -fipa-cp -fipa-cp-clone -fipa-bit-cp -fpredictive-commoning -fsplit-loops -funswitch-loops -fgcse-after-reload -ftree-loop-vectorize -ftree-slp-vectorize -fvect-cost-model=dynamic -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns -fprofile-correction path is the name of a file containing AutoFDO profile information. If omitted, it defaults to fbdata.afdo in the current directory. Producing an AutoFDO profile data file requires running your program with the perf utility on a supported GNU/Linux target system. For more information, see https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/. E.g. perf record -e br_inst_retired:near_taken -b -o perf.data \ -- your_program Then use the create_gcov tool to convert the raw profile data to a format that can be used by GCC. You must also supply the unstripped binary for your program to this tool. See https://github.com/google/autofdo. E.g. create_gcov --binary=your_program.unstripped --profile=perf.data \ --gcov=profile.afdo 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. -fexcess-precision=style This option allows further control over excess precision on machines where floating-point operations occur in a format with more precision or range than the IEEE standard and interchange floating-point types. By default, -fexcess-precision=fast is in effect; this means that operations may be carried out in a wider precision than the types specified in the source if that would result in faster code, and it is unpredictable when rounding to the types specified in the source code takes place. When compiling C, if -fexcess-precision=standard is specified then excess precision follows the rules specified in ISO C99; in particular, both casts and assignments cause values to be rounded to their semantic types (whereas -ffloat-store only affects assignments). This option is enabled by default for C if a strict conformance option such as -std=c99 is used. -ffast-math enables -fexcess-precision=fast by default regardless of whether a strict conformance option is used. -fexcess-precision=standard is not implemented for languages other than C. On the x86, it has no effect if -mfpmath=sse or -mfpmath=sse+387 is specified; in the former case, IEEE semantics apply without excess precision, and in the latter, rounding is unpredictable. -ffast-math Sets the options -fno-math-errno, -funsafe-math-optimizations, -ffinite-math-only, -fno-rounding-math, -fno-signaling-nans, -fcx-limited-range and -fexcess-precision=fast. This option causes the preprocessor macro __FAST_MATH__ to be defined. This option is not turned on by any -O option besides -Ofast since it can result in incorrect output for programs that depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions. It may, however, yield faster code for programs that do not require the guarantees of these specifications. -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. This option is not turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs that depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions. It may, however, yield faster code for programs that do not require the guarantees of these specifications. The default is -fmath-errno. 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 is not turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs that depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions. It may, however, yield faster code for programs that do not require the guarantees of these specifications. Enables -fno-signed-zeros, -fno-trapping-math, -fassociative-math and -freciprocal-math. The default is -fno-unsafe-math-optimizations. -fassociative-math Allow re-association of operands in series of floating-point operations. This violates the ISO C and C++ language standard by possibly changing computation result. NOTE: re-ordering may change the sign of zero as well as ignore NaNs and inhibit or create underflow or overflow (and thus cannot be used on code that relies on rounding behavior like (x + 2**52) - 2**52. May also reorder floating-point comparisons and thus may not be used when ordered comparisons are required. This option requires that both -fno-signed-zeros and -fno-trapping-math be in effect. Moreover, it doesn't make much sense with -frounding-math. For Fortran the option is automatically enabled when both -fno-signed-zeros and -fno-trapping-math are in effect. The default is -fno-associative-math. -freciprocal-math Allow the reciprocal of a value to be used instead of dividing by the value if this enables optimizations. For example x / y can be replaced with x * (1/y), which is useful if (1/y) is subject to common subexpression elimination. Note that this loses precision and increases the number of flops operating on the value. The default is -fno-reciprocal-math. -ffinite-math-only Allow optimizations for floating-point arithmetic that assume that arguments and results are not NaNs or +-Infs. This option is not turned on by any -O option since it can result in incorrect output for programs that depend on an exact implementation of IEEE or ISO rules/specifications for math functions. It may, however, yield faster code for programs that do not require the guarantees of these specifications. The default is -fno-finite-math-only. -fno-signed-zeros Allow optimizations for floating-point arithmetic that ignore the signedness of zero. IEEE arithmetic specifies the behavior of distinct +0.0 and -0.0 values, which then prohibits simplification of expressions such as x+0.0 or 0.0*x (even with -ffinite-math-only). This option implies that the sign of a zero result isn't significant. The default is -fsigned-zeros. -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 requires that -fno-signaling-nans be in effect. 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 that 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. -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. -fno-fp-int-builtin-inexact Do not allow the built-in functions ceil, floor, round and trunc, and their float and long double variants, to generate code that raises the “inexact” floating-point exception for noninteger arguments. ISO C99 and C11 allow these functions to raise the “inexact” exception, but ISO/IEC TS 18661-1:2014, the C bindings to IEEE 754-2008, does not allow these functions to do so. The default is -ffp-int-builtin-inexact, allowing the exception to be raised. This option does nothing unless -ftrapping-math is in effect. Even if -fno-fp-int-builtin-inexact is used, if the functions generate a call to a library function then the “inexact” exception may be raised if the library implementation does not follow TS 18661. -fsingle-precision-constant Treat floating-point constants as single precision instead of implicitly converting them to double-precision constants. -fcx-limited-range When enabled, this option states that a range reduction step is not needed when performing complex division. Also, there is no checking whether the result of a complex multiplication or division is NaN + I*NaN, with an attempt to rescue the situation in that case. 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. -fcx-fortran-rules Complex multiplication and division follow Fortran rules. Range reduction is done as part of complex division, but there is no checking whether the result of a complex multiplication or division is NaN + I*NaN, with an attempt to rescue the situation in that case. The default is -fno-cx-fortran-rules. 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 (see Instrumentation Options), you can compile it a second time using -fbranch-probabilities, to improve optimizations based on the number of times each branch was taken. When a 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 most likely to take, the 'REG_BR_PROB' values are used to exactly determine which path is taken more often. Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 for usage in optimizations. Enabled by -fprofile-generate, -fprofile-use, and -fauto-profile. -fprofile-reorder-functions Function reordering based on profile instrumentation collects first time of execution of a function and orders these functions in ascending order. Enabled with -fprofile-use. -fvpt If combined with -fprofile-arcs, this option instructs the compiler to add 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 operations using the knowledge about the value of the denominator. Enabled with -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -frename-registers Attempt to avoid false dependencies in scheduled code by making use of registers left over after register allocation. This optimization most benefits processors with lots of registers. Depending on the debug information format adopted by the target, however, it can make debugging impossible, since variables no longer stay in a “home register”. Enabled by default with -funroll-loops. -fschedule-fusion Performs a target dependent pass over the instruction stream to schedule instructions of same type together because target machine can execute them more efficiently if they are adjacent to each other in the instruction flow. Enabled at levels -O2, -O3, -Os. -ftracer Perform tail duplication to enlarge superblock size. This transformation simplifies the control flow of the function allowing other optimizations to do a better job. Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 a small constant number of iterations). This option makes code larger, and may or may not make it run faster. Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 loops for which there is enough information that they do not roll much (from profile feedback or static analysis). It also turns on complete loop peeling (i.e. complete removal of loops with small constant number of iterations). Enabled by -O3, -fprofile-use, and -fauto-profile. -fmove-loop-invariants Enables the loop invariant motion pass in the RTL loop optimizer. Enabled at level -O1 and higher, except for -Og. -fsplit-loops Split a loop into two if it contains a condition that's always true for one side of the iteration space and false for the other. Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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). Enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -fversion-loops-for-strides If a loop iterates over an array with a variable stride, create another version of the loop that assumes the stride is always one. For example: for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) x[i * stride] = …; becomes: if (stride == 1) for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) x[i] = …; else for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) x[i * stride] = …; This is particularly useful for assumed-shape arrays in Fortran where (for example) it allows better vectorization assuming contiguous accesses. This flag is enabled by default at -O3. It is also enabled by -fprofile-use and -fauto-profile. -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 have linkers with such optimizations. On AIX, the linker rearranges sections (CSECTs) based on the call graph. The performance impact varies. Together with a linker garbage collection (linker --gc-sections option) these options may lead to smaller statically-linked executables (after stripping). On ELF/DWARF systems these options do not degenerate the quality of the debug information. There could be issues with other object files/debug info formats. Only use these options when there are significant benefits from doing so. When you specify these options, the assembler and linker create larger object and executable files and are also slower. These options affect code generation. They prevent optimizations by the compiler and assembler using relative locations inside a translation unit since the locations are unknown until link time. An example of such an optimization is relaxing calls to short call instructions. -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 within any basic block. -fstdarg-opt Optimize the prologue of variadic argument functions with respect to usage of those arguments. -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; } usually calculates the addresses of all three variables, but if you compile it with -fsection-anchors, it accesses 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 does not inline functions that contain more than 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 order to get minimal, maximal and default value of a parameter, one can use --help=param -Q options. In each case, the value is an integer. The allowable choices for name are: predictable-branch-outcome When branch is predicted to be taken with probability lower than this threshold (in percent), then it is considered well predictable. max-rtl-if-conversion-insns RTL if-conversion tries to remove conditional branches around a block and replace them with conditionally executed instructions. This parameter gives the maximum number of instructions in a block which should be considered for if-conversion. The compiler will also use other heuristics to decide whether if-conversion is likely to be profitable. max-rtl-if-conversion-predictable-cost max-rtl-if-conversion-unpredictable-cost RTL if-conversion will try to remove conditional branches around a block and replace them with conditionally executed instructions. These parameters give the maximum permissible cost for the sequence that would be generated by if-conversion depending on whether the branch is statically determined to be predictable or not. The units for this parameter are the same as those for the GCC internal seq_cost metric. The compiler will try to provide a reasonable default for this parameter using the BRANCH_COST target macro. max-crossjump-edges The maximum number of incoming edges to consider for cross-jumping. 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 compilation time increase with probably small improvement in executable size. min-crossjump-insns The minimum number of instructions that must be matched at the end of two blocks before cross-jumping is performed on them. This value is ignored in the case where all instructions in the block being cross-jumped from are matched. 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. 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. 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 are searched, the time savings from filling the delay slot are minimal, so stop searching. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compilation time increase with probably small improvement in execution 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 compilation 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 can be allocated in order to perform the global common subexpression elimination optimization. If more memory than specified is required, the optimization is not done. max-gcse-insertion-ratio If the ratio of expression insertions to deletions is larger than this value for any expression, then RTL PRE inserts or removes the expression and thus leaves partially redundant computations in the instruction stream. max-pending-list-length The maximum number of pending dependencies scheduling allows 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-modulo-backtrack-attempts The maximum number of backtrack attempts the scheduler should make when modulo scheduling a loop. Larger values can exponentially increase compilation time. 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 considers for inlining. This only affects functions declared inline and methods implemented in a class declaration (C++). 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 are investigated. To those functions, a different (more restrictive) limit compared to functions declared inline can be applied. max-inline-insns-small This is bound applied to calls which are considered relevant with -finline-small-functions. max-inline-insns-size This is bound applied to calls which are optimized for size. Small growth may be desirable to anticipate optimization oppurtunities exposed by inlining. uninlined-function-insns Number of instructions accounted by inliner for function overhead such as function prologue and epilogue. uninlined-function-time Extra time accounted by inliner for function overhead such as time needed to execute function prologue and epilogue uninlined-thunk-insns uninlined-thunk-time Same as --param uninlined-function-insns and --param uninlined-function-time but applied to function thunks inline-min-speedup When estimated performance improvement of caller + callee runtime exceeds this threshold (in percent), the function can be inlined regardless of the limit on --param max-inline-insns-single and --param max-inline-insns-auto. 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 back end. large-function-growth Specifies maximal growth of large function caused by inlining in percents. For example, parameter value 100 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. For example, consider a unit consisting of function A that is inline and B that just calls A three times. 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 inlineable 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. inline-unit-growth Specifies maximal overall growth of the compilation unit caused by inlining. For example, parameter value 20 limits unit growth to 1.2 times the original size. Cold functions (either marked cold via an attribute or by profile feedback) are not accounted into the unit size. ipcp-unit-growth Specifies maximal overall growth of the compilation unit caused by interprocedural constant propagation. For example, parameter value 10 limits unit growth to 1.1 times the original size. large-stack-frame The limit specifying large stack frames. While inlining the algorithm is trying to not grow past this limit too much. large-stack-frame-growth Specifies maximal growth of large stack frames caused by inlining in percents. For example, parameter value 1000 limits large stack frame growth to 11 times the original size. max-inline-insns-recursive max-inline-insns-recursive-auto Specifies the maximum number of instructions an out-of-line copy of a self-recursive inline function can grow into by performing recursive inlining. --param max-inline-insns-recursive applies to functions declared inline. For functions not declared inline, recursive inlining happens only when -finline-functions (included in -O3) is enabled; --param max-inline-insns-recursive-auto applies instead. max-inline-recursive-depth max-inline-recursive-depth-auto Specifies the maximum recursion depth used for recursive inlining. --param max-inline-recursive-depth applies to functions declared inline. For functions not declared inline, recursive inlining happens only when -finline-functions (included in -O3) is enabled; --param max-inline-recursive-depth-auto applies instead. 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 the probability that function recurses via a given call expression. This parameter limits inlining only to call expressions whose probability exceeds the given threshold (in percents). early-inlining-insns Specify growth that the early inliner can make. In effect it increases the amount of inlining for code having a large abstraction penalty. max-early-inliner-iterations Limit of iterations of the early inliner. This basically bounds the number of nested indirect calls the early inliner can resolve. Deeper chains are still handled by late inlining. comdat-sharing-probability Probability (in percent) that C++ inline function with comdat visibility are shared across multiple compilation units. profile-func-internal-id A parameter to control whether to use function internal id in profile database lookup. If the value is 0, the compiler uses an id that is based on function assembler name and filename, which makes old profile data more tolerant to source changes such as function reordering etc. min-vect-loop-bound The minimum number of iterations under which loops are not vectorized when -ftree-vectorize is used. The number of iterations after vectorization needs to be greater than the value specified by this option to allow vectorization. gcse-cost-distance-ratio Scaling factor in calculation of maximum distance an expression can be moved by GCSE optimizations. This is currently supported only in the code hoisting pass. The bigger the ratio, the more aggressive code hoisting is with simple expressions, i.e., the expressions that have cost less than gcse-unrestricted-cost. Specifying 0 disables hoisting of simple expressions. gcse-unrestricted-cost Cost, roughly measured as the cost of a single typical machine instruction, at which GCSE optimizations do not constrain the distance an expression can travel. This is currently supported only in the code hoisting pass. The lesser the cost, the more aggressive code hoisting is. Specifying 0 allows all expressions to travel unrestricted distances. max-hoist-depth The depth of search in the dominator tree for expressions to hoist. This is used to avoid quadratic behavior in hoisting algorithm. The value of 0 does not limit on the search, but may slow down compilation of huge functions. max-tail-merge-comparisons The maximum amount of similar bbs to compare a bb with. This is used to avoid quadratic behavior in tree tail merging. max-tail-merge-iterations The maximum amount of iterations of the pass over the function. This is used to limit compilation time in tree tail merging. store-merging-allow-unaligned Allow the store merging pass to introduce unaligned stores if it is legal to do so. max-stores-to-merge The maximum number of stores to attempt to merge into wider stores in the store merging pass. max-unrolled-insns The maximum number of instructions that a loop may have to be unrolled. If a loop is unrolled, this parameter also 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 may have to be unrolled. If a loop is unrolled, this parameter also 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 may have to be peeled. If a loop is peeled, this parameter also determines how many times the loop code is peeled. max-peel-times The maximum number of peelings of a single loop. max-peel-branches The maximum number of branches on the hot path through the peeled sequence. 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-completely-peel-loop-nest-depth The maximum depth of a loop nest 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 which all candidates are considered for each use in induction variable optimizations. If there are more candidates than this, only the most relevant ones are considered 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 the number of candidates in the set is smaller than this value, always try to remove unnecessary ivs from the set when adding a new one. avg-loop-niter Average number of iterations of a loop. dse-max-object-size Maximum size (in bytes) of objects tracked bytewise by dead store elimination. Larger values may result in larger compilation times. dse-max-alias-queries-per-store Maximum number of queries into the alias oracle per store. Larger values result in larger compilation times and may result in more removed dead stores. scev-max-expr-size Bound on size of expressions used in the scalar evolutions analyzer. Large expressions slow the analyzer. scev-max-expr-complexity Bound on the complexity of the expressions in the scalar evolutions analyzer. Complex expressions slow the analyzer. max-tree-if-conversion-phi-args Maximum number of arguments in a PHI supported by TREE if conversion unless the loop is marked with simd pragma. vect-max-version-for-alignment-checks The maximum number of run-time checks that can be performed when doing loop versioning for alignment in the vectorizer. vect-max-version-for-alias-checks The maximum number of run-time checks that can be performed when doing loop versioning for alias in the vectorizer. vect-max-peeling-for-alignment The maximum number of loop peels to enhance access alignment for vectorizer. Value -1 means no limit. max-iterations-to-track The maximum number of iterations of a loop the brute-force algorithm for analysis of the number of iterations of the loop tries to evaluate. hot-bb-count-ws-permille A basic block profile count is considered hot if it contributes to the given permillage (i.e. 0...1000) of the entire profiled execution. hot-bb-frequency-fraction Select fraction of the entry block 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 a function contains a single loop with known bound and another loop with unknown bound. The known number of iterations is predicted correctly, while the unknown number of iterations average to roughly 10. This means that the loop without bounds appears artificially cold relative to the other one. builtin-expect-probability Control the probability of the expression having the specified value. This parameter takes a percentage (i.e. 0 ... 100) as input. builtin-string-cmp-inline-length The maximum length of a constant string for a builtin string cmp call eligible for inlining. align-threshold Select fraction of the maximal frequency of executions of a basic block in a function to align the basic block. align-loop-iterations A loop expected to iterate at least the selected number of iterations is aligned. 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 parameter 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 a rather artificial limit, as most of the duplicates are 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-probability tracer-min-branch-probability-feedback Stop forward growth if the best edge has probability lower than this threshold. Similarly to tracer-dynamic-coverage two parameters are provided. tracer-min-branch-probability-feedback is used for compilation with profile feedback and tracer-min-branch-probability compilation without. The value for compilation with profile feedback needs to be more conservative (higher) in order to make tracer effective. stack-clash-protection-guard-size Specify the size of the operating system provided stack guard as 2 raised to num bytes. Higher values may reduce the number of explicit probes, but a value larger than the operating system provided guard will leave code vulnerable to stack clash style attacks. stack-clash-protection-probe-interval Stack clash protection involves probing stack space as it is allocated. This param controls the maximum distance between probes into the stack as 2 raised to num bytes. Higher values may reduce the number of explicit probes, but a value larger than the operating system provided guard will leave code vulnerable to stack clash style attacks. max-cse-path-length The maximum number of basic blocks on path that CSE considers. max-cse-insns The maximum number of instructions CSE processes before flushing. 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 that 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 compilation time increase with probably slightly better performance. max-cselib-memory-locations The maximum number of memory locations cselib should take into account. Increasing values mean more aggressive optimization, making the compilation time increase with probably slightly better performance. 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. max-sched-region-blocks The maximum number of blocks in a region to be considered for interblock scheduling. max-pipeline-region-blocks The maximum number of blocks in a region to be considered for pipelining in the selective scheduler. max-sched-region-insns The maximum number of insns in a region to be considered for interblock scheduling. max-pipeline-region-insns The maximum number of insns in a region to be considered for pipelining in the selective scheduler. min-spec-prob The minimum probability (in percents) of reaching a source block for interblock speculative scheduling. max-sched-extend-regions-iters The maximum number of iterations through CFG to extend regions. A value of 0 disables region extensions. max-sched-insn-conflict-delay The maximum conflict delay for an insn to be considered for speculative motion. sched-spec-prob-cutoff The minimal probability of speculation success (in percents), so that speculative insns are scheduled. sched-state-edge-prob-cutoff The minimum probability an edge must have for the scheduler to save its state across it. sched-mem-true-dep-cost Minimal distance (in CPU cycles) between store and load targeting same memory locations. selsched-max-lookahead The maximum size of the lookahead window of selective scheduling. It is a depth of search for available instructions. selsched-max-sched-times The maximum number of times that an instruction is scheduled during selective scheduling. This is the limit on the number of iterations through which the instruction may be pipelined. selsched-insns-to-rename The maximum number of best instructions in the ready list that are considered for renaming in the selective scheduler. sms-min-sc The minimum value of stage count that swing modulo scheduler generates. 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. max-combine-insns The maximum number of instructions the RTL combiner tries to combine. 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. ssp-buffer-size The minimum size of buffers (i.e. arrays) that receive stack smashing protection when -fstack-protection is used. min-size-for-stack-sharing The minimum size of variables taking part in stack slot sharing when not optimizing. 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 treated in a field sensitive manner during pointer analysis. prefetch-latency Estimate on average number of instructions that are executed before prefetch finishes. The distance prefetched ahead is proportional to this constant. Increasing this number may also lead to less streams being prefetched (see simultaneous-prefetches). simultaneous-prefetches Maximum number of prefetches that can run at the same time. l1-cache-line-size The size of cache line in L1 data cache, in bytes. l1-cache-size The size of L1 data cache, in kilobytes. l2-cache-size The size of L2 data cache, in kilobytes. prefetch-dynamic-strides Whether the loop array prefetch pass should issue software prefetch hints for strides that are non-constant. In some cases this may be beneficial, though the fact the stride is non-constant may make it hard to predict when there is clear benefit to issuing these hints. Set to 1 if the prefetch hints should be issued for non-constant strides. Set to 0 if prefetch hints should be issued only for strides that are known to be constant and below prefetch-minimum-stride. prefetch-minimum-stride Minimum constant stride, in bytes, to start using prefetch hints for. If the stride is less than this threshold, prefetch hints will not be issued. This setting is useful for processors that have hardware prefetchers, in which case there may be conflicts between the hardware prefetchers and the software prefetchers. If the hardware prefetchers have a maximum stride they can handle, it should be used here to improve the use of software prefetchers. A value of -1 means we don't have a threshold and therefore prefetch hints can be issued for any constant stride. This setting is only useful for strides that are known and constant. loop-interchange-max-num-stmts The maximum number of stmts in a loop to be interchanged. loop-interchange-stride-ratio The minimum ratio between stride of two loops for interchange to be profitable. min-insn-to-prefetch-ratio The minimum ratio between the number of instructions and the number of prefetches to enable prefetching in a loop. prefetch-min-insn-to-mem-ratio The minimum ratio between the number of instructions and the number of memory references to enable prefetching in a loop. use-canonical-types Whether the compiler should use the “canonical” type system. Should always be 1, which uses a more efficient internal mechanism for comparing types in C++ and Objective-C++. However, if bugs in the canonical type system are causing compilation failures, set this value to 0 to disable canonical types. switch-conversion-max-branch-ratio Switch initialization conversion refuses to create arrays that are bigger than switch-conversion-max-branch-ratio times the number of branches in the switch. max-partial-antic-length Maximum length of the partial antic set computed during the tree partial redundancy elimination optimization (-ftree-pre) when optimizing at -O3 and above. For some sorts of source code the enhanced partial redundancy elimination optimization can run away, consuming all of the memory available on the host machine. This parameter sets a limit on the length of the sets that are computed, which prevents the runaway behavior. Setting a value of 0 for this parameter allows an unlimited set length. rpo-vn-max-loop-depth Maximum loop depth that is value-numbered optimistically. When the limit hits the innermost rpo-vn-max-loop-depth loops and the outermost loop in the loop nest are value-numbered optimistically and the remaining ones not. sccvn-max-alias-queries-per-access Maximum number of alias-oracle queries we perform when looking for redundancies for loads and stores. If this limit is hit the search is aborted and the load or store is not considered redundant. The number of queries is algorithmically limited to the number of stores on all paths from the load to the function entry. ira-max-loops-num IRA uses regional register allocation by default. If a function contains more loops than the number given by this parameter, only at most the given number of the most frequently-executed loops form regions for regional register allocation. ira-max-conflict-table-size Although IRA uses a sophisticated algorithm to compress the conflict table, the table can still require excessive amounts of memory for huge functions. If the conflict table for a function could be more than the size in MB given by this parameter, the register allocator instead uses a faster, simpler, and lower-quality algorithm that does not require building a pseudo-register conflict table. ira-loop-reserved-regs IRA can be used to evaluate more accurate register pressure in loops for decisions to move loop invariants (see -O3). The number of available registers reserved for some other purposes is given by this parameter. Default of the parameter is the best found from numerous experiments. lra-inheritance-ebb-probability-cutoff LRA tries to reuse values reloaded in registers in subsequent insns. This optimization is called inheritance. EBB is used as a region to do this optimization. The parameter defines a minimal fall-through edge probability in percentage used to add BB to inheritance EBB in LRA. The default value was chosen from numerous runs of SPEC2000 on x86-64. loop-invariant-max-bbs-in-loop Loop invariant motion can be very expensive, both in compilation time and in amount of needed compile-time memory, with very large loops. Loops with more basic blocks than this parameter won't have loop invariant motion optimization performed on them. loop-max-datarefs-for-datadeps Building data dependencies is expensive for very large loops. This parameter limits the number of data references in loops that are considered for data dependence analysis. These large loops are no handled by the optimizations using loop data dependencies. max-vartrack-size Sets a maximum number of hash table slots to use during variable tracking dataflow analysis of any function. If this limit is exceeded with variable tracking at assignments enabled, analysis for that function is retried without it, after removing all debug insns from the function. If the limit is exceeded even without debug insns, var tracking analysis is completely disabled for the function. Setting the parameter to zero makes it unlimited. max-vartrack-expr-depth Sets a maximum number of recursion levels when attempting to map variable names or debug temporaries to value expressions. This trades compilation time for more complete debug information. If this is set too low, value expressions that are available and could be represented in debug information may end up not being used; setting this higher may enable the compiler to find more complex debug expressions, but compile time and memory use may grow. max-debug-marker-count Sets a threshold on the number of debug markers (e.g. begin stmt markers) to avoid complexity explosion at inlining or expanding to RTL. If a function has more such gimple stmts than the set limit, such stmts will be dropped from the inlined copy of a function, and from its RTL expansion. min-nondebug-insn-uid Use uids starting at this parameter for nondebug insns. The range below the parameter is reserved exclusively for debug insns created by -fvar-tracking-assignments, but debug insns may get (non-overlapping) uids above it if the reserved range is exhausted. ipa-sra-ptr-growth-factor IPA-SRA replaces a pointer to an aggregate with one or more new parameters only when their cumulative size is less or equal to ipa-sra-ptr-growth-factor times the size of the original pointer parameter. sra-max-scalarization-size-Ospeed sra-max-scalarization-size-Osize The two Scalar Reduction of Aggregates passes (SRA and IPA-SRA) aim to replace scalar parts of aggregates with uses of independent scalar variables. These parameters control the maximum size, in storage units, of aggregate which is considered for replacement when compiling for speed (sra-max-scalarization-size-Ospeed) or size (sra-max-scalarization-size-Osize) respectively. tm-max-aggregate-size When making copies of thread-local variables in a transaction, this parameter specifies the size in bytes after which variables are saved with the logging functions as opposed to save/restore code sequence pairs. This option only applies when using -fgnu-tm. graphite-max-nb-scop-params To avoid exponential effects in the Graphite loop transforms, the number of parameters in a Static Control Part (SCoP) is bounded. A value of zero can be used to lift the bound. A variable whose value is unknown at compilation time and defined outside a SCoP is a parameter of the SCoP. loop-block-tile-size Loop blocking or strip mining transforms, enabled with -floop-block or -floop-strip-mine, strip mine each loop in the loop nest by a given number of iterations. The strip length can be changed using the loop-block-tile-size parameter. ipa-cp-value-list-size IPA-CP attempts to track all possible values and types passed to a function's parameter in order to propagate them and perform devirtualization. ipa-cp-value-list-size is the maximum number of values and types it stores per one formal parameter of a function. ipa-cp-eval-threshold IPA-CP calculates its own score of cloning profitability heuristics and performs those cloning opportunities with scores that exceed ipa-cp-eval-threshold. ipa-cp-recursion-penalty Percentage penalty the recursive functions will receive when they are evaluated for cloning. ipa-cp-single-call-penalty Percentage penalty functions containing a single call to another function will receive when they are evaluated for cloning. ipa-max-agg-items IPA-CP is also capable to propagate a number of scalar values passed in an aggregate. ipa-max-agg-items controls the maximum number of such values per one parameter. ipa-cp-loop-hint-bonus When IPA-CP determines that a cloning candidate would make the number of iterations of a loop known, it adds a bonus of ipa-cp-loop-hint-bonus to the profitability score of the candidate. ipa-cp-array-index-hint-bonus When IPA-CP determines that a cloning candidate would make the index of an array access known, it adds a bonus of ipa-cp-array-index-hint-bonus to the profitability score of the candidate. ipa-max-aa-steps During its analysis of function bodies, IPA-CP employs alias analysis in order to track values pointed to by function parameters. In order not spend too much time analyzing huge functions, it gives up and consider all memory clobbered after examining ipa-max-aa-steps statements modifying memory. lto-partitions Specify desired number of partitions produced during WHOPR compilation. The number of partitions should exceed the number of CPUs used for compilation. lto-min-partition Size of minimal partition for WHOPR (in estimated instructions). This prevents expenses of splitting very small programs into too many partitions. lto-max-partition Size of max partition for WHOPR (in estimated instructions). to provide an upper bound for individual size of partition. Meant to be used only with balanced partitioning. lto-max-streaming-parallelism Maximal number of parallel processes used for LTO streaming. cxx-max-namespaces-for-diagnostic-help The maximum number of namespaces to consult for suggestions when C++ name lookup fails for an identifier. sink-frequency-threshold The maximum relative execution frequency (in percents) of the target block relative to a statement's original block to allow statement sinking of a statement. Larger numbers result in more aggressive statement sinking. A small positive adjustment is applied for statements with memory operands as those are even more profitable so sink. max-stores-to-sink The maximum number of conditional store pairs that can be sunk. Set to 0 if either vectorization (-ftree-vectorize) or if-conversion (-ftree-loop-if-convert) is disabled. allow-store-data-races Allow optimizers to introduce new data races on stores. Set to 1 to allow, otherwise to 0. case-values-threshold The smallest number of different values for which it is best to use a jump-table instead of a tree of conditional branches. If the value is 0, use the default for the machine. tree-reassoc-width Set the maximum number of instructions executed in parallel in reassociated tree. This parameter overrides target dependent heuristics used by default if has non zero value. sched-pressure-algorithm Choose between the two available implementations of -fsched-pressure. Algorithm 1 is the original implementation and is the more likely to prevent instructions from being reordered. Algorithm 2 was designed to be a compromise between the relatively conservative approach taken by algorithm 1 and the rather aggressive approach taken by the default scheduler. It relies more heavily on having a regular register file and accurate register pressure classes. See haifa-sched.c in the GCC sources for more details. The default choice depends on the target. max-slsr-cand-scan Set the maximum number of existing candidates that are considered when seeking a basis for a new straight-line strength reduction candidate. asan-globals Enable buffer overflow detection for global objects. This kind of protection is enabled by default if you are using -fsanitize=address option. To disable global objects protection use --param asan-globals=0. asan-stack Enable buffer overflow detection for stack objects. This kind of protection is enabled by default when using -fsanitize=address. To disable stack protection use --param asan-stack=0 option. asan-instrument-reads Enable buffer overflow detection for memory reads. This kind of protection is enabled by default when using -fsanitize=address. To disable memory reads protection use --param asan-instrument-reads=0. asan-instrument-writes Enable buffer overflow detection for memory writes. This kind of protection is enabled by default when using -fsanitize=address. To disable memory writes protection use --param asan-instrument-writes=0 option. asan-memintrin Enable detection for built-in functions. This kind of protection is enabled by default when using -fsanitize=address. To disable built-in functions protection use --param asan-memintrin=0. asan-use-after-return Enable detection of use-after-return. This kind of protection is enabled by default when using the -fsanitize=address option. To disable it use --param asan-use-after-return=0. Note: By default the check is disabled at run time. To enable it, add detect_stack_use_after_return=1 to the environment variable ASAN_OPTIONS. asan-instrumentation-with-call-threshold If number of memory accesses in function being instrumented is greater or equal to this number, use callbacks instead of inline checks. E.g. to disable inline code use --param asan-instrumentation-with-call-threshold=0. use-after-scope-direct-emission-threshold If the size of a local variable in bytes is smaller or equal to this number, directly poison (or unpoison) shadow memory instead of using run-time callbacks. max-fsm-thread-path-insns Maximum number of instructions to copy when duplicating blocks on a finite state automaton jump thread path. max-fsm-thread-length Maximum number of basic blocks on a finite state automaton jump thread path. max-fsm-thread-paths Maximum number of new jump thread paths to create for a finite state automaton. parloops-chunk-size Chunk size of omp schedule for loops parallelized by parloops. parloops-schedule Schedule type of omp schedule for loops parallelized by parloops (static, dynamic, guided, auto, runtime). parloops-min-per-thread The minimum number of iterations per thread of an innermost parallelized loop for which the parallelized variant is preferred over the single threaded one. Note that for a parallelized loop nest the minimum number of iterations of the outermost loop per thread is two. max-ssa-name-query-depth Maximum depth of recursion when querying properties of SSA names in things like fold routines. One level of recursion corresponds to following a use-def chain. hsa-gen-debug-stores Enable emission of special debug stores within HSA kernels which are then read and reported by libgomp plugin. Generation of these stores is disabled by default, use --param hsa-gen-debug-stores=1 to enable it. max-speculative-devirt-maydefs The maximum number of may-defs we analyze when looking for a must-def specifying the dynamic type of an object that invokes a virtual call we may be able to devirtualize speculatively. max-vrp-switch-assertions The maximum number of assertions to add along the default edge of a switch statement during VRP. unroll-jam-min-percent The minimum percentage of memory references that must be optimized away for the unroll-and-jam transformation to be considered profitable. unroll-jam-max-unroll The maximum number of times the outer loop should be unrolled by the unroll-and-jam transformation. max-rtl-if-conversion-unpredictable-cost Maximum permissible cost for the sequence that would be generated by the RTL if-conversion pass for a branch that is considered unpredictable. max-variable-expansions-in-unroller If -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller is used, the maximum number of times that an individual variable will be expanded during loop unrolling. tracer-min-branch-probability-feedback Stop forward growth if the probability of best edge is less than this threshold (in percent). Used when profile feedback is available. partial-inlining-entry-probability Maximum probability of the entry BB of split region (in percent relative to entry BB of the function) to make partial inlining happen. max-tracked-strlens Maximum number of strings for which strlen optimization pass will track string lengths. gcse-after-reload-partial-fraction The threshold ratio for performing partial redundancy elimination after reload. gcse-after-reload-critical-fraction The threshold ratio of critical edges execution count that permit performing redundancy elimination after reload. max-loop-header-insns The maximum number of insns in loop header duplicated by the copy loop headers pass. vect-epilogues-nomask Enable loop epilogue vectorization using smaller vector size. slp-max-insns-in-bb Maximum number of instructions in basic block to be considered for SLP vectorization. avoid-fma-max-bits Maximum number of bits for which we avoid creating FMAs. sms-loop-average-count-threshold A threshold on the average loop count considered by the swing modulo scheduler. sms-dfa-history The number of cycles the swing modulo scheduler considers when checking conflicts using DFA. 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 (used in non-LTO mode) max-inline-insns-recursive-auto The maximum number of instructions non-inline function can grow to via recursive inlining. graphite-allow-codegen-errors Whether codegen errors should be ICEs when -fchecking. sms-max-ii-factor A factor for tuning the upper bound that swing modulo scheduler uses for scheduling a loop. lra-max-considered-reload-pseudos The max number of reload pseudos which are considered during spilling a non-reload pseudo. max-pow-sqrt-depth Maximum depth of sqrt chains to use when synthesizing exponentiation by a real constant. max-dse-active-local-stores Maximum number of active local stores in RTL dead store elimination. asan-instrument-allocas Enable asan allocas/VLAs protection. max-iterations-computation-cost Bound on the cost of an expression to compute the number of iterations. max-isl-operations Maximum number of isl operations, 0 means unlimited. graphite-max-arrays-per-scop Maximum number of arrays per scop. max-vartrack-reverse-op-size Max. size of loc list for which reverse ops should be added. unlikely-bb-count-fraction The minimum fraction of profile runs a given basic block execution count must be not to be considered unlikely. tracer-dynamic-coverage-feedback The percentage of function, weighted by execution frequency, that must be covered by trace formation. Used when profile feedback is available. max-inline-recursive-depth-auto The maximum depth of recursive inlining for non-inline functions. fsm-scale-path-stmts Scale factor to apply to the number of statements in a threading path when comparing to the number of (scaled) blocks. fsm-maximum-phi-arguments Maximum number of arguments a PHI may have before the FSM threader will not try to thread through its block. uninit-control-dep-attempts Maximum number of nested calls to search for control dependencies during uninitialized variable analysis. indir-call-topn-profile Track top N target addresses in indirect-call profile. max-once-peeled-insns The maximum number of insns of a peeled loop that rolls only once. sra-max-scalarization-size-Osize Maximum size, in storage units, of an aggregate which should be considered for scalarization when compiling for size. fsm-scale-path-blocks Scale factor to apply to the number of blocks in a threading path when comparing to the number of (scaled) statements. sched-autopref-queue-depth Hardware autoprefetcher scheduler model control flag. Number of lookahead cycles the model looks into; at ' ' only enable instruction sorting heuristic. loop-versioning-max-inner-insns The maximum number of instructions that an inner loop can have before the loop versioning pass considers it too big to copy. loop-versioning-max-outer-insns The maximum number of instructions that an outer loop can have before the loop versioning pass considers it too big to copy, discounting any instructions in inner loops that directly benefit from versioning. ssa-name-def-chain-limit The maximum number of SSA_NAME assignments to follow in determining a property of a variable such as its value. This limits the number of iterations or recursive calls GCC performs when optimizing certain statements or when determining their validity prior to issuing diagnostics. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Instrumentation Options, Previous: Debugging Options, Up: Invoking Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Preprocessor Options Link: prev: Optimize Options Next: Preprocessor Options, Previous: Optimize Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.11 Program Instrumentation Options GCC supports a number of command-line options that control adding run-time instrumentation to the code it normally generates. For example, one purpose of instrumentation is collect profiling statistics for use in finding program hot spots, code coverage analysis, or profile-guided optimizations. Another class of program instrumentation is adding run-time checking to detect programming errors like invalid pointer dereferences or out-of-bounds array accesses, as well as deliberately hostile attacks such as stack smashing or C++ vtable hijacking. There is also a general hook which can be used to implement other forms of tracing or function-level instrumentation for debug or program analysis purposes. -p -pg Generate extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis program prof (for -p) or gprof (for -pg). You must use this option when compiling the source files you want data about, and you must also use it when linking. You can use the function attribute no_instrument_function to suppress profiling of individual functions when compiling with these options. See Common Function Attributes. -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. On targets that support constructors with priority support, profiling properly handles constructors, destructors and C++ constructors (and destructors) of classes which are used as a type of a global variable. 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). See Cross-profiling. --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. * Compile the source files additionally with -fprofile-abs-path to create absolute path names in the .gcno files. This allows gcov to find the correct sources in projects where compilations occur with different working directories. * 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. Unless a strict ISO C dialect option is in effect, fork calls are detected and correctly handled without double counting. * For profile-directed optimizations, compile the source files again with the same optimization and code generation options plus -fbranch-probabilities (see Options that Control Optimization). * 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 (see gcov—a Test Coverage Program) 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 matches the source files more closely if you do not optimize. -fprofile-abs-path Automatically convert relative source file names to absolute path names in the .gcno files. This allows gcov to find the correct sources in projects where compilations occur with different working directories. -fprofile-dir=path Set the directory to search for the profile data files in to path. This option affects only the profile data generated by -fprofile-generate, -ftest-coverage, -fprofile-arcs and used by -fprofile-use and -fbranch-probabilities and its related options. Both absolute and relative paths can be used. By default, GCC uses the current directory as path, thus the profile data file appears in the same directory as the object file. In order to prevent the file name clashing, if the object file name is not an absolute path, we mangle the absolute path of the sourcename.gcda file and use it as the file name of a .gcda file. When an executable is run in a massive parallel environment, it is recommended to save profile to different folders. That can be done with variables in path that are exported during run-time: %p process ID. %q{VAR} value of environment variable VAR -fprofile-generate -fprofile-generate=path 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, -finline-functions, and -fipa-bit-cp. If path is specified, GCC looks at the path to find the profile feedback data files. See -fprofile-dir. To optimize the program based on the collected profile information, use -fprofile-use. See Optimize Options, for more information. -fprofile-update=method Alter the update method for an application instrumented for profile feedback based optimization. The method argument should be one of 'single', 'atomic' or 'prefer-atomic'. The first one is useful for single-threaded applications, while the second one prevents profile corruption by emitting thread-safe code. Warning: When an application does not properly join all threads (or creates an detached thread), a profile file can be still corrupted. Using 'prefer-atomic' would be transformed either to 'atomic', when supported by a target, or to 'single' otherwise. The GCC driver automatically selects 'prefer-atomic' when -pthread is present in the command line. -fprofile-filter-files=regex Instrument only functions from files where names match any regular expression (separated by a semi-colon). For example, -fprofile-filter-files=main.c;module.*.c will instrument only main.c and all C files starting with 'module'. -fprofile-exclude-files=regex Instrument only functions from files where names do not match all the regular expressions (separated by a semi-colon). For example, -fprofile-exclude-files=/usr/* will prevent instrumentation of all files that are located in /usr/ folder. -fsanitize=address Enable AddressSanitizer, a fast memory error detector. Memory access instructions are instrumented to detect out-of-bounds and use-after-free bugs. The option enables -fsanitize-address-use-after-scope. See https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizer for more details. The run-time behavior can be influenced using the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable. When set to help=1, the available options are shown at startup of the instrumented program. See https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizerFlags#run-time-flags for a list of supported options. The option cannot be combined with -fsanitize=thread. -fsanitize=kernel-address Enable AddressSanitizer for Linux kernel. See https://github.com/google/kasan/wiki for more details. -fsanitize=pointer-compare Instrument comparison operation (<, <=, >, >=) with pointer operands. The option must be combined with either -fsanitize=kernel-address or -fsanitize=address The option cannot be combined with -fsanitize=thread. Note: By default the check is disabled at run time. To enable it, add detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=2 to the environment variable ASAN_OPTIONS. Using detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 detects invalid operation only when both pointers are non-null. -fsanitize=pointer-subtract Instrument subtraction with pointer operands. The option must be combined with either -fsanitize=kernel-address or -fsanitize=address The option cannot be combined with -fsanitize=thread. Note: By default the check is disabled at run time. To enable it, add detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=2 to the environment variable ASAN_OPTIONS. Using detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 detects invalid operation only when both pointers are non-null. -fsanitize=thread Enable ThreadSanitizer, a fast data race detector. Memory access instructions are instrumented to detect data race bugs. See https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki#threadsanitizer for more details. The run-time behavior can be influenced using the TSAN_OPTIONS environment variable; see https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/ThreadSanitizerFlags for a list of supported options. The option cannot be combined with -fsanitize=address, -fsanitize=leak. Note that sanitized atomic builtins cannot throw exceptions when operating on invalid memory addresses with non-call exceptions (-fnon-call-exceptions). -fsanitize=leak Enable LeakSanitizer, a memory leak detector. This option only matters for linking of executables and the executable is linked against a library that overrides malloc and other allocator functions. See https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizerLeakSanitizer for more details. The run-time behavior can be influenced using the LSAN_OPTIONS environment variable. The option cannot be combined with -fsanitize=thread. -fsanitize=undefined Enable UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, a fast undefined behavior detector. Various computations are instrumented to detect undefined behavior at runtime. Current suboptions are: -fsanitize=shift This option enables checking that the result of a shift operation is not undefined. Note that what exactly is considered undefined differs slightly between C and C++, as well as between ISO C90 and C99, etc. This option has two suboptions, -fsanitize=shift-base and -fsanitize=shift-exponent. -fsanitize=shift-exponent This option enables checking that the second argument of a shift operation is not negative and is smaller than the precision of the promoted first argument. -fsanitize=shift-base If the second argument of a shift operation is within range, check that the result of a shift operation is not undefined. Note that what exactly is considered undefined differs slightly between C and C++, as well as between ISO C90 and C99, etc. -fsanitize=integer-divide-by-zero Detect integer division by zero as well as INT_MIN / -1 division. -fsanitize=unreachable With this option, the compiler turns the __builtin_unreachable call into a diagnostics message call instead. When reaching the __builtin_unreachable call, the behavior is undefined. -fsanitize=vla-bound This option instructs the compiler to check that the size of a variable length array is positive. -fsanitize=null This option enables pointer checking. Particularly, the application built with this option turned on will issue an error message when it tries to dereference a NULL pointer, or if a reference (possibly an rvalue reference) is bound to a NULL pointer, or if a method is invoked on an object pointed by a NULL pointer. -fsanitize=return This option enables return statement checking. Programs built with this option turned on will issue an error message when the end of a non-void function is reached without actually returning a value. This option works in C++ only. -fsanitize=signed-integer-overflow This option enables signed integer overflow checking. We check that the result of +, *, and both unary and binary - does not overflow in the signed arithmetics. Note, integer promotion rules must be taken into account. That is, the following is not an overflow: signed char a = SCHAR_MAX; a++; -fsanitize=bounds This option enables instrumentation of array bounds. Various out of bounds accesses are detected. Flexible array members, flexible array member-like arrays, and initializers of variables with static storage are not instrumented. -fsanitize=bounds-strict This option enables strict instrumentation of array bounds. Most out of bounds accesses are detected, including flexible array members and flexible array member-like arrays. Initializers of variables with static storage are not instrumented. -fsanitize=alignment This option enables checking of alignment of pointers when they are dereferenced, or when a reference is bound to insufficiently aligned target, or when a method or constructor is invoked on insufficiently aligned object. -fsanitize=object-size This option enables instrumentation of memory references using the __builtin_object_size function. Various out of bounds pointer accesses are detected. -fsanitize=float-divide-by-zero Detect floating-point division by zero. Unlike other similar options, -fsanitize=float-divide-by-zero is not enabled by -fsanitize=undefined, since floating-point division by zero can be a legitimate way of obtaining infinities and NaNs. -fsanitize=float-cast-overflow This option enables floating-point type to integer conversion checking. We check that the result of the conversion does not overflow. Unlike other similar options, -fsanitize=float-cast-overflow is not enabled by -fsanitize=undefined. This option does not work well with FE_INVALID exceptions enabled. -fsanitize=nonnull-attribute This option enables instrumentation of calls, checking whether null values are not passed to arguments marked as requiring a non-null value by the nonnull function attribute. -fsanitize=returns-nonnull-attribute This option enables instrumentation of return statements in functions marked with returns_nonnull function attribute, to detect returning of null values from such functions. -fsanitize=bool This option enables instrumentation of loads from bool. If a value other than 0/1 is loaded, a run-time error is issued. -fsanitize=enum This option enables instrumentation of loads from an enum type. If a value outside the range of values for the enum type is loaded, a run-time error is issued. -fsanitize=vptr This option enables instrumentation of C++ member function calls, member accesses and some conversions between pointers to base and derived classes, to verify the referenced object has the correct dynamic type. -fsanitize=pointer-overflow This option enables instrumentation of pointer arithmetics. If the pointer arithmetics overflows, a run-time error is issued. -fsanitize=builtin This option enables instrumentation of arguments to selected builtin functions. If an invalid value is passed to such arguments, a run-time error is issued. E.g. passing 0 as the argument to __builtin_ctz or __builtin_clz invokes undefined behavior and is diagnosed by this option. While -ftrapv causes traps for signed overflows to be emitted, -fsanitize=undefined gives a diagnostic message. This currently works only for the C family of languages. -fno-sanitize=all This option disables all previously enabled sanitizers. -fsanitize=all is not allowed, as some sanitizers cannot be used together. -fasan-shadow-offset=number This option forces GCC to use custom shadow offset in AddressSanitizer checks. It is useful for experimenting with different shadow memory layouts in Kernel AddressSanitizer. -fsanitize-sections=s1,s2,... Sanitize global variables in selected user-defined sections. si may contain wildcards. -fsanitize-recover[=opts] -fsanitize-recover= controls error recovery mode for sanitizers mentioned in comma-separated list of opts. Enabling this option for a sanitizer component causes it to attempt to continue running the program as if no error happened. This means multiple runtime errors can be reported in a single program run, and the exit code of the program may indicate success even when errors have been reported. The -fno-sanitize-recover= option can be used to alter this behavior: only the first detected error is reported and program then exits with a non-zero exit code. Currently this feature only works for -fsanitize=undefined (and its suboptions except for -fsanitize=unreachable and -fsanitize=return), -fsanitize=float-cast-overflow, -fsanitize=float-divide-by-zero, -fsanitize=bounds-strict, -fsanitize=kernel-address and -fsanitize=address. For these sanitizers error recovery is turned on by default, except -fsanitize=address, for which this feature is experimental. -fsanitize-recover=all and -fno-sanitize-recover=all is also accepted, the former enables recovery for all sanitizers that support it, the latter disables recovery for all sanitizers that support it. Even if a recovery mode is turned on the compiler side, it needs to be also enabled on the runtime library side, otherwise the failures are still fatal. The runtime library defaults to halt_on_error=0 for ThreadSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, while default value for AddressSanitizer is halt_on_error=1. This can be overridden through setting the halt_on_error flag in the corresponding environment variable. Syntax without an explicit opts parameter is deprecated. It is equivalent to specifying an opts list of: undefined,float-cast-overflow,float-divide-by-zero,bounds-strict -fsanitize-address-use-after-scope Enable sanitization of local variables to detect use-after-scope bugs. The option sets -fstack-reuse to 'none'. -fsanitize-undefined-trap-on-error The -fsanitize-undefined-trap-on-error option instructs the compiler to report undefined behavior using __builtin_trap rather than a libubsan library routine. The advantage of this is that the libubsan library is not needed and is not linked in, so this is usable even in freestanding environments. -fsanitize-coverage=trace-pc Enable coverage-guided fuzzing code instrumentation. Inserts a call to __sanitizer_cov_trace_pc into every basic block. -fsanitize-coverage=trace-cmp Enable dataflow guided fuzzing code instrumentation. Inserts a call to __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmp1, __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmp2, __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmp4 or __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmp8 for integral comparison with both operands variable or __sanitizer_cov_trace_const_cmp1, __sanitizer_cov_trace_const_cmp2, __sanitizer_cov_trace_const_cmp4 or __sanitizer_cov_trace_const_cmp8 for integral comparison with one operand constant, __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmpf or __sanitizer_cov_trace_cmpd for float or double comparisons and __sanitizer_cov_trace_switch for switch statements. -fcf-protection=[full|branch|return|none] Enable code instrumentation of control-flow transfers to increase program security by checking that target addresses of control-flow transfer instructions (such as indirect function call, function return, indirect jump) are valid. This prevents diverting the flow of control to an unexpected target. This is intended to protect against such threats as Return-oriented Programming (ROP), and similarly call/jmp-oriented programming (COP/JOP). The value branch tells the compiler to implement checking of validity of control-flow transfer at the point of indirect branch instructions, i.e. call/jmp instructions. The value return implements checking of validity at the point of returning from a function. The value full is an alias for specifying both branch and return. The value none turns off instrumentation. The macro __CET__ is defined when -fcf-protection is used. The first bit of __CET__ is set to 1 for the value branch and the second bit of __CET__ is set to 1 for the return. You can also use the nocf_check attribute to identify which functions and calls should be skipped from instrumentation (see Function Attributes). Currently the x86 GNU/Linux target provides an implementation based on Intel Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). -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. -fstack-protector-strong Like -fstack-protector but includes additional functions to be protected — those that have local array definitions, or have references to local frame addresses. -fstack-protector-explicit Like -fstack-protector but only protects those functions which have the stack_protect attribute. -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 you 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 or the language runtime must do that. The switch causes generation of code to ensure that they see the stack being extended. You can additionally specify a string parameter: 'no' means no checking, 'generic' means force the use of old-style checking, 'specific' means use the best checking method and is equivalent to bare -fstack-check. Old-style checking is a generic mechanism that requires no specific target support in the compiler but comes with the following drawbacks: 1. Modified allocation strategy for large objects: they are always allocated dynamically if their size exceeds a fixed threshold. Note this may change the semantics of some code. 2. Fixed limit on the size of the static frame of functions: when it is topped by a particular function, stack checking is not reliable and a warning is issued by the compiler. 3. Inefficiency: because of both the modified allocation strategy and the generic implementation, code performance is hampered. Note that old-style stack checking is also the fallback method for 'specific' if no target support has been added in the compiler. '-fstack-check=' is designed for Ada's needs to detect infinite recursion and stack overflows. 'specific' is an excellent choice when compiling Ada code. It is not generally sufficient to protect against stack-clash attacks. To protect against those you want '-fstack-clash-protection'. -fstack-clash-protection Generate code to prevent stack clash style attacks. When this option is enabled, the compiler will only allocate one page of stack space at a time and each page is accessed immediately after allocation. Thus, it prevents allocations from jumping over any stack guard page provided by the operating system. Most targets do not fully support stack clash protection. However, on those targets -fstack-clash-protection will protect dynamic stack allocations. -fstack-clash-protection may also provide limited protection for static stack allocations if the target supports -fstack-check=specific. -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 a larger stack is required, a signal is raised at run time. 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. You can locally override stack limit checking by using the no_stack_limit function attribute (see Function Attributes). -fsplit-stack Generate code to automatically split the stack before it overflows. The resulting program has a discontiguous stack which can only overflow if the program is unable to allocate any more memory. This is most useful when running threaded programs, as it is no longer necessary to calculate a good stack size to use for each thread. This is currently only implemented for the x86 targets running GNU/Linux. When code compiled with -fsplit-stack calls code compiled without -fsplit-stack, there may not be much stack space available for the latter code to run. If compiling all code, including library code, with -fsplit-stack is not an option, then the linker can fix up these calls so that the code compiled without -fsplit-stack always has a large stack. Support for this is implemented in the gold linker in GNU binutils release 2.21 and later. -fvtable-verify=[std|preinit|none] This option is only available when compiling C++ code. It turns on (or off, if using -fvtable-verify=none) the security feature that verifies at run time, for every virtual call, that the vtable pointer through which the call is made is valid for the type of the object, and has not been corrupted or overwritten. If an invalid vtable pointer is detected at run time, an error is reported and execution of the program is immediately halted. This option causes run-time data structures to be built at program startup, which are used for verifying the vtable pointers. The options 'std' and 'preinit' control the timing of when these data structures are built. In both cases the data structures are built before execution reaches main. Using -fvtable-verify=std causes the data structures to be built after shared libraries have been loaded and initialized. -fvtable-verify=preinit causes them to be built before shared libraries have been loaded and initialized. If this option appears multiple times in the command line with different values specified, 'none' takes highest priority over both 'std' and 'preinit'; 'preinit' takes priority over 'std'. -fvtv-debug When used in conjunction with -fvtable-verify=std or -fvtable-verify=preinit, causes debug versions of the runtime functions for the vtable verification feature to be called. This flag also causes the compiler to log information about which vtable pointers it finds for each class. This information is written to a file named vtv_set_ptr_data.log in the directory named by the environment variable VTV_LOGS_DIR if that is defined or the current working directory otherwise. Note: This feature appends data to the log file. If you want a fresh log file, be sure to delete any existing one. -fvtv-counts This is a debugging flag. When used in conjunction with -fvtable-verify=std or -fvtable-verify=preinit, this causes the compiler to keep track of the total number of virtual calls it encounters and the number of verifications it inserts. It also counts the number of calls to certain run-time library functions that it inserts and logs this information for each compilation unit. The compiler writes this information to a file named vtv_count_data.log in the directory named by the environment variable VTV_LOGS_DIR if that is defined or the current working directory otherwise. It also counts the size of the vtable pointer sets for each class, and writes this information to vtv_class_set_sizes.log in the same directory. Note: This feature appends data to the log files. To get fresh log files, be sure to delete any existing ones. -finstrument-functions Generate instrumentation calls for entry and exit to functions. Just after function entry and just before function exit, the following profiling functions are 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 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 anyway, 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 is not 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). See Common Function Attributes. -finstrument-functions-exclude-file-list=file,file,… Set the list of functions that are excluded from instrumentation (see the description of -finstrument-functions). If the file that contains a function definition matches with one of file, then that function is not instrumented. The match is done on substrings: if the file parameter is a substring of the file name, it is considered to be a match. For example: -finstrument-functions-exclude-file-list=/bits/stl,include/sys excludes any inline function defined in files whose pathnames contain /bits/stl or include/sys. If, for some reason, you want to include letter ',' in one of sym, write '\,'. For example, -finstrument-functions-exclude-file-list='\,\,tmp' (note the single quote surrounding the option). -finstrument-functions-exclude-function-list=sym,sym,… This is similar to -finstrument-functions-exclude-file-list, but this option sets the list of function names to be excluded from instrumentation. The function name to be matched is its user-visible name, such as vector blah(const vector &), not the internal mangled name (e.g., _Z4blahRSt6vectorIiSaIiEE). The match is done on substrings: if the sym parameter is a substring of the function name, it is considered to be a match. For C99 and C++ extended identifiers, the function name must be given in UTF-8, not using universal character names. -fpatchable-function-entry=N[,M] Generate N NOPs right at the beginning of each function, with the function entry point before the Mth NOP. If M is omitted, it defaults to 0 so the function entry points to the address just at the first NOP. The NOP instructions reserve extra space which can be used to patch in any desired instrumentation at run time, provided that the code segment is writable. The amount of space is controllable indirectly via the number of NOPs; the NOP instruction used corresponds to the instruction emitted by the internal GCC back-end interface gen_nop. This behavior is target-specific and may also depend on the architecture variant and/or other compilation options. For run-time identification, the starting addresses of these areas, which correspond to their respective function entries minus M, are additionally collected in the __patchable_function_entries section of the resulting binary. Note that the value of __attribute__ ((patchable_function_entry (N,M))) takes precedence over command-line option -fpatchable-function-entry=N,M. This can be used to increase the area size or to remove it completely on a single function. If N=0, no pad location is recorded. The NOP instructions are inserted at—and maybe before, depending on M—the function entry address, even before the prologue. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Preprocessor Options, Previous: Optimize Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Assembler Options Link: prev: Instrumentation Options Next: Assembler Options, Previous: Instrumentation Options, Up: Invoking ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.12 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. In addition to the options listed here, there are a number of options to control search paths for include files documented in Directory Options. Options to control preprocessor diagnostics are listed in Warning Options. -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 is 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 should 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. -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. -undef Do not predefine any system-specific or GCC-specific macros. The standard predefined macros remain defined. -pthread Define additional macros required for using the POSIX threads library. You should use this option consistently for both compilation and linking. This option is supported on GNU/Linux targets, most other Unix derivatives, and also on x86 Cygwin and MinGW targets. -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 name of the source file with any suffix replaced with object file suffix and with any leading directory parts removed. 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 (see Environment Variables). Debug output is still 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 appears in -MM dependency output. -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 send preprocessed output. When used with the driver options -MD or -MMD, -MF overrides the default dependency output file. If file is -, then the dependencies are written to stdout. -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, deletes any directory components and any file suffix such as '.c', and appends the platform's usual object suffix. The result is the target. An -MT option sets 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 takes the name of the input file, removes any directory components and suffix, and applies a .d suffix. If -MD is used in conjunction with -E, any -o switch is understood to specify the dependency output file (see -MF), 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. -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. -fdirectives-only When preprocessing, handle directives, but do not expand macros. The option's behavior depends on the -E and -fpreprocessed options. With -E, preprocessing is limited to the handling of directives such as #define, #ifdef, and #error. Other preprocessor operations, such as macro expansion and trigraph conversion are not performed. In addition, the -dD option is implicitly enabled. With -fpreprocessed, predefinition of command line and most builtin macros is disabled. Macros such as __LINE__, which are contextually dependent, are handled normally. This enables compilation of files previously preprocessed with -E -fdirectives-only. With both -E and -fpreprocessed, the rules for -fpreprocessed take precedence. This enables full preprocessing of files previously preprocessed with -E -fdirectives-only. -fdollars-in-identifiers Accept '$' in identifiers. -fextended-identifiers Accept universal character names in identifiers. This option is enabled by default for C99 (and later C standard versions) and C++. -fno-canonical-system-headers When preprocessing, do not shorten system header paths with canonicalization. -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. -ftrack-macro-expansion[=level] Track locations of tokens across macro expansions. This allows the compiler to emit diagnostic about the current macro expansion stack when a compilation error occurs in a macro expansion. Using this option makes the preprocessor and the compiler consume more memory. The level parameter can be used to choose the level of precision of token location tracking thus decreasing the memory consumption if necessary. Value '0' of level de-activates this option. Value '1' tracks tokens locations in a degraded mode for the sake of minimal memory overhead. In this mode all tokens resulting from the expansion of an argument of a function-like macro have the same location. Value '2' tracks tokens locations completely. This value is the most memory hungry. When this option is given no argument, the default parameter value is '2'. Note that -ftrack-macro-expansion=2 is activated by default. -fmacro-prefix-map=old=new When preprocessing files residing in directory old, expand the __FILE__ and __BASE_FILE__ macros as if the files resided in directory new instead. This can be used to change an absolute path to a relative path by using . for new which can result in more reproducible builds that are location independent. This option also affects __builtin_FILE() during compilation. See also -ffile-prefix-map. -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. -fpch-deps When using precompiled headers (see Precompiled Headers), this flag causes the dependency-output flags to also list the files from the precompiled header's dependencies. If not specified, only the precompiled header are 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 (see Precompiled Headers) 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. -fworking-directory Enable generation of linemarkers in the preprocessor output that let the compiler know the current working directory at the time of preprocessing. When this option is enabled, the preprocessor emits, after the initial linemarker, a second linemarker with the current working directory followed by two slashes. GCC uses 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. -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. -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. -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. -traditional -traditional-cpp Try to imitate the behavior of pre-standard C preprocessors, as opposed to ISO C preprocessors. See the GNU CPP manual for details. Note that GCC does not otherwise attempt to emulate a pre-standard C compiler, and these options are only supported with the -E switch, or when invoking CPP explicitly. -trigraphs Support ISO C trigraphs. 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. The nine trigraphs and their replacements are Trigraph: ??( ??) ??< ??> ??= ??/ ??' ??! ??- Replacement: [ ] { } # \ ^ | ~ By default, GCC ignores trigraphs, but in standard-conforming modes it converts them. See the -std and -ansi options. -remap Enable special code to work around file systems which only permit very short file names, such as MS-DOS. -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 '...!' . -dletters Says to make debugging dumps during compilation as specified by letters. The flags documented here are those relevant to the preprocessor. Other letters are interpreted by the compiler proper, or reserved for future versions of GCC, and so are silently ignored. If you specify letters whose behavior conflicts, the result is undefined. See Developer Options, for more information. -dM 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 shows all the predefined macros. If you use -dM without the -E option, -dM is interpreted as a synonym for -fdump-rtl-mach. See (gcc)Developer Options. -dD Like -dM 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. -dN Like -dD, but emit only the macro names, not their expansions. -dI Output '#include' directives in addition to the result of preprocessing. -dU Like -dD except that only macros that are expanded, or whose definedness is tested in preprocessor directives, are output; the output is delayed until the use or test of the macro; and '#undef' directives are also output for macros tested but undefined at the time. -fdebug-cpp This option is only useful for debugging GCC. When used from CPP or with -E, it dumps debugging information about location maps. Every token in the output is preceded by the dump of the map its location belongs to. When used from GCC without -E, this option has no effect. -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 that GCC does not 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. -no-integrated-cpp Perform preprocessing as a separate pass before compilation. By default, GCC performs preprocessing as an integrated part of input tokenization and parsing. If this option is provided, the appropriate language front end (cc1, cc1plus, or cc1obj for C, C++, and Objective-C, respectively) is instead invoked twice, once for preprocessing only and once for actual compilation of the preprocessed input. This option may be useful in conjunction with the -B or -wrapper options to specify an alternate preprocessor or perform additional processing of the program source between normal preprocessing and compilation. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Assembler Options, Previous: Instrumentation Options, Up: Invoking Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Link Options Link: prev: Preprocessor Options Next: Link Options, Previous: Preprocessor Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.13 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 that GCC does not 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. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Directory Options Link: prev: Assembler Options Next: Directory Options, Previous: Assembler Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.14 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. 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. See Overall Options. -flinker-output=type This option controls the code generation of the link time optimizer. By default the linker output is determined by the linker plugin automatically. For debugging the compiler and in the case of incremental linking to non-lto object file is desired, it may be useful to control the type manually. If type is 'exec' the code generation is configured to produce static binary. In this case -fpic and -fpie are both disabled. If type is 'dyn' the code generation is configured to produce shared library. In this case -fpic or -fPIC is preserved, but not enabled automatically. This makes it possible to build shared libraries without position independent code on architectures this is possible, i.e. on x86. If type is 'pie' the code generation is configured to produce -fpie executable. This result in similar optimizations as 'exec' except that -fpie is not disabled if specified at compilation time. If type is 'rel' the compiler assumes that incremental linking is done. The sections containing intermediate code for link-time optimization are merged, pre-optimized, and output to the resulting object file. In addition, if -ffat-lto-objects is specified the binary code is produced for future non-lto linking. The object file produced by incremental linking will be smaller than a static library produced from the same object files. At link-time the result of incremental linking will also load faster to compiler than a static library assuming that majority of objects in the library are used. Finally 'nolto-rel' configure compiler to for incremental linking where code generation is forced, final binary is produced and the intermediate code for later link-time optimization is stripped. When multiple object files are linked together the resulting code will be optimized better than with link time optimizations disabled (for example, the cross-module inlining will happen), most of benefits of whole program optimizations are however lost. During the incremental link (by -r) the linker plugin will default to rel. With current interfaces to GNU Binutils it is however not possible to link incrementally LTO objects and non-LTO objects into a single mixed object file. In the case any of object files in incremental link cannot be used for link-time optimization the linker plugin will output warning and use 'nolto-rel'. To maintain the whole program optimization it is recommended to link such objects into static library instead. Alternatively it is possible to use H.J. Lu's binutils with support for mixed objects. -fuse-ld=bfd Use the bfd linker instead of the default linker. -fuse-ld=gold Use the gold linker instead of the default linker. -fuse-ld=lld Use the LLVM lld linker instead of the default linker. -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.) The -l option is passed directly to the linker by GCC. Refer to your linker documentation for exact details. The general description below applies to the GNU linker. The linker searches a standard list of directories for the library. The directories searched include several standard system directories plus any that you specify with -L. Static libraries are archives of object files, and have file names like liblibrary.a. Some targets also support shared libraries, which typically have names like liblibrary.so. If both static and shared libraries are found, the linker gives preference to linking with the shared library unless the -static option is used. 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. -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, -nolibc, or -nodefaultlibs is used. -nodefaultlibs Do not use the standard system libraries when linking. Only the libraries you specify are passed to the linker, and options specifying linkage of the system libraries, such as -static-libgcc or -shared-libgcc, are ignored. 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. -nolibc Do not use the C library or system libraries tightly coupled with it when linking. Still link with the startup files, libgcc or toolchain provided language support libraries such as libgnat, libgfortran or libstdc++ unless options preventing their inclusion are used as well. This typically removes -lc from the link command line, as well as system libraries that normally go with it and become meaningless when absence of a C library is assumed, for example -lpthread or -lm in some configurations. This is intended for bare-board targets when there is indeed no C library available. -nostdlib Do not use the standard system startup files or libraries when linking. No startup files and only the libraries you specify are passed to the linker, and options specifying linkage of the system libraries, such as -static-libgcc or -shared-libgcc, are ignored. 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 which GCC uses to overcome shortcomings of particular machines, or special needs for some languages. (See Interfacing to GCC Output in GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals, for more discussion of libgcc.a.) 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. (An example of such an internal subroutine is __main, used to ensure C++ constructors are called; see collect2 in GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals.) -e entry --entry=entry Specify that the program entry point is entry. The argument is interpreted by the linker; the GNU linker accepts either a symbol name or an address. -pie Produce a dynamically linked position independent executable on targets that support it. For predictable results, you must also specify the same set of options used for compilation (-fpie, -fPIE, or model suboptions) when you specify this linker option. -no-pie Don't produce a dynamically linked position independent executable. -static-pie Produce a static position independent executable on targets that support it. A static position independent executable is similar to a static executable, but can be loaded at any address without a dynamic linker. For predictable results, you must also specify the same set of options used for compilation (-fpie, -fPIE, or model suboptions) when you specify this linker option. -pthread Link with the POSIX threads library. This option is supported on GNU/Linux targets, most other Unix derivatives, and also on x86 Cygwin and MinGW targets. On some targets this option also sets flags for the preprocessor, so it should be used consistently for both compilation and linking. -r Produce a relocatable object as output. This is also known as partial linking. -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 overrides -pie and prevents linking with the shared libraries. On other systems, this option has no effect. -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 used for compilation (-fpic, -fPIC, or model suboptions) when you specify this linker option.^1 -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++ driver automatically adds -shared-libgcc whenever you build a shared library or a main executable, because C++ 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 are not always 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 links the shared version of libgcc into shared libraries by default. Otherwise, it takes advantage of the linker and optimizes 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++ driver, or using the option -shared-libgcc, such that it is linked with the shared libgcc. -static-libasan When the -fsanitize=address option is used to link a program, the GCC driver automatically links against libasan. If libasan is available as a shared library, and the -static option is not used, then this links against the shared version of libasan. The -static-libasan option directs the GCC driver to link libasan statically, without necessarily linking other libraries statically. -static-libtsan When the -fsanitize=thread option is used to link a program, the GCC driver automatically links against libtsan. If libtsan is available as a shared library, and the -static option is not used, then this links against the shared version of libtsan. The -static-libtsan option directs the GCC driver to link libtsan statically, without necessarily linking other libraries statically. -static-liblsan When the -fsanitize=leak option is used to link a program, the GCC driver automatically links against liblsan. If liblsan is available as a shared library, and the -static option is not used, then this links against the shared version of liblsan. The -static-liblsan option directs the GCC driver to link liblsan statically, without necessarily linking other libraries statically. -static-libubsan When the -fsanitize=undefined option is used to link a program, the GCC driver automatically links against libubsan. If libubsan is available as a shared library, and the -static option is not used, then this links against the shared version of libubsan. The -static-libubsan option directs the GCC driver to link libubsan statically, without necessarily linking other libraries statically. -static-libstdc++ When the g++ program is used to link a C++ program, it normally automatically links against libstdc++. If libstdc++ is available as a shared library, and the -static option is not used, then this links against the shared version of libstdc++. That is normally fine. However, it is sometimes useful to freeze the version of libstdc++ used by the program without going all the way to a fully static link. The -static-libstdc++ option directs the g++ driver to link libstdc++ statically, without necessarily linking other libraries statically. -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. -T script Use script as the linker script. This option is supported by most systems using the GNU linker. On some targets, such as bare-board targets without an operating system, the -T option may be required when linking to avoid references to undefined symbols. -Xlinker option Pass option as an option to the linker. You can use this to supply system-specific linker options that GCC does not recognize. If you want to pass an option that takes a separate 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. When using the GNU linker, it is usually more convenient to pass arguments to linker options using the option=value syntax than as separate arguments. For example, you can specify -Xlinker -Map=output.map rather than -Xlinker -Map -Xlinker output.map. Other linkers may not support this syntax for command-line options. -Wl,option Pass option as an option to the linker. If option contains commas, it is split into multiple options at the commas. You can use this syntax to pass an argument to the option. For example, -Wl,-Map,output.map passes -Map output.map to the linker. When using the GNU linker, you can also get the same effect with -Wl,-Map=output.map. -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. -z keyword -z is passed directly on to the linker along with the keyword keyword. See the section in the documentation of your linker for permitted values and their meanings. 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. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Directory Options, Previous: Assembler Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Code Gen Options Link: prev: Link Options Next: Code Gen Options, Previous: Link Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.15 Options for Directory Search These options specify directories to search for header files, for libraries and for parts of the compiler: -I dir -iquote dir -isystem dir -idirafter dir Add the directory dir to the list of directories to be searched for header files during preprocessing. If dir begins with '=' or $SYSROOT, then the '=' or $SYSROOT is replaced by the sysroot prefix; see --sysroot and -isysroot. Directories specified with -iquote apply only to the quote form of the directive, #include "file". Directories specified with -I, -isystem, or -idirafter apply to lookup for both the #include "file" and #include directives. You can specify any number or combination of these options on the command line to search for header files in several directories. The lookup order is as follows: 1. For the quote form of the include directive, the directory of the current file is searched first. 2. For the quote form of the include directive, the directories specified by -iquote options are searched in left-to-right order, as they appear on the command line. 3. Directories specified with -I options are scanned in left-to-right order. 4. Directories specified with -isystem options are scanned in left-to-right order. 5. Standard system directories are scanned. 6. Directories specified with -idirafter options are scanned in left-to-right order. You can use -I to override a system header file, substituting your own version, since these directories are searched before the standard 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. The -isystem and -idirafter options also mark the directory as a system directory, so that it gets the same special treatment that is applied to the standard system directories. If a standard system include directory, or a directory specified with -isystem, is also specified with -I, the -I option is ignored. The directory is still 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. -I- Split the include path. This option has been deprecated. Please use -iquote instead for -I directories before the -I- and remove the -I- option. Any directories specified with -I options before -I- are searched only for headers requested with #include "file"; they are not searched for #include . 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". There is no way to override this effect of -I-. -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 Darwin targets, where it applies to both header files and libraries). See the --sysroot option for more information. -imultilib dir Use dir as a subdirectory of the directory containing target-specific C++ headers. -nostdinc Do not search the standard system directories for header files. Only the directories explicitly specified with -I, -iquote, -isystem, and/or -idirafter 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.) -iplugindir=dir Set the directory to search for plugins that are passed by -fplugin=name instead of -fplugin=path/name.so. This option is not meant to be used by the user, but only passed by the driver. -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 the corresponding target machine and compiler 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 is not specified, the driver tries two standard prefixes, /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 checks to see if the path provided by -B refers to a directory, and if necessary it adds 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 include 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 runtime 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. See Environment Variables. 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 is replaced by [dir/]include. This is to help with boot-strapping the compiler. -no-canonical-prefixes Do not expand any symbolic links, resolve references to '/../' or '/./', or make the path absolute when generating a relative prefix. --sysroot=dir Use dir as the logical root directory for headers and libraries. For example, if the compiler normally searches for headers in /usr/include and libraries in /usr/lib, it instead searches dir/usr/include and dir/usr/lib. If you use both this option and the -isysroot option, then the --sysroot option applies to libraries, but the -isysroot option applies 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 still works, but the library aspect does not. --no-sysroot-suffix For some targets, a suffix is added to the root directory specified with --sysroot, depending on the other options used, so that headers may for example be found in dir/suffix/usr/include instead of dir/usr/include. This option disables the addition of such a suffix. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Code Gen Options, Previous: Link Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Developer Options Link: prev: Directory Options Next: Developer Options, Previous: Directory Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.16 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 is -fno-foo. In the table below, only one of the forms is listed—the one that is not the default. You can figure out the other form by either removing 'no-' or adding it. -fstack-reuse=reuse-level This option controls stack space reuse for user declared local/auto variables and compiler generated temporaries. reuse_level can be 'all', 'named_vars', or 'none'. 'all' enables stack reuse for all local variables and temporaries, 'named_vars' enables the reuse only for user defined local variables with names, and 'none' disables stack reuse completely. The default value is 'all'. The option is needed when the program extends the lifetime of a scoped local variable or a compiler generated temporary beyond the end point defined by the language. When a lifetime of a variable ends, and if the variable lives in memory, the optimizing compiler has the freedom to reuse its stack space with other temporaries or scoped local variables whose live range does not overlap with it. Legacy code extending local lifetime is likely to break with the stack reuse optimization. For example, int *p; { int local1; p = &local1; local1 = 10; .... } { int local2; local2 = 20; ... } if (*p == 10) // out of scope use of local1 { } Another example: struct A { A(int k) : i(k), j(k) { } int i; int j; }; A *ap; void foo(const A& ar) { ap = &ar; } void bar() { foo(A(10)); // temp object's lifetime ends when foo returns { A a(20); .... } ap->i+= 10; // ap references out of scope temp whose space // is reused with a. What is the value of ap->i? } The lifetime of a compiler generated temporary is well defined by the C++ standard. When a lifetime of a temporary ends, and if the temporary lives in memory, the optimizing compiler has the freedom to reuse its stack space with other temporaries or scoped local variables whose live range does not overlap with it. However some of the legacy code relies on the behavior of older compilers in which temporaries' stack space is not reused, the aggressive stack reuse can lead to runtime errors. This option is used to control the temporary stack reuse optimization. -ftrapv This option generates traps for signed overflow on addition, subtraction, multiplication operations. The options -ftrapv and -fwrapv override each other, so using -ftrapv -fwrapv on the command-line results in -fwrapv being effective. Note that only active options override, so using -ftrapv -fwrapv -fno-wrapv on the command-line results in -ftrapv being effective. -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. The options -ftrapv and -fwrapv override each other, so using -ftrapv -fwrapv on the command-line results in -fwrapv being effective. Note that only active options override, so using -ftrapv -fwrapv -fno-wrapv on the command-line results in -ftrapv being effective. -fwrapv-pointer This option instructs the compiler to assume that pointer arithmetic overflow on addition and subtraction wraps around using twos-complement representation. This flag disables some optimizations which assume pointer overflow is invalid. -fstrict-overflow This option implies -fno-wrapv -fno-wrapv-pointer and when negated implies -fwrapv -fwrapv-pointer. -fexceptions Enable exception handling. Generates extra code needed to propagate exceptions. For some targets, this implies GCC generates 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 enables it by default for languages like C++ that normally require exception handling, and disables 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. -fdelete-dead-exceptions Consider that instructions that may throw exceptions but don't otherwise contribute to the execution of the program can be optimized away. This option is enabled by default for the Ada front end, as permitted by the Ada language specification. Optimization passes that cause dead exceptions to be removed are enabled independently at different optimization levels. -funwind-tables Similar to -fexceptions, except that it just generates any needed static data, but does not affect the generated code in any other way. You normally do not need to enable this option; instead, a language processor that needs this handling enables it on your behalf. -fasynchronous-unwind-tables Generate unwind table in DWARF 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). -fno-gnu-unique On systems with recent GNU assembler and C library, the C++ compiler uses the STB_GNU_UNIQUE binding to make sure that definitions of template static data members and static local variables in inline functions are unique even in the presence of RTLD_LOCAL; this is necessary to avoid problems with a library used by two different RTLD_LOCAL plugins depending on a definition in one of them and therefore disagreeing with the other one about the binding of the symbol. But this causes dlclose to be ignored for affected DSOs; if your program relies on reinitialization of a DSO via dlclose and dlopen, you can use -fno-gnu-unique. -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 is equivalent to the smallest integer type that 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-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 code, this option controls the placement of global variables defined without an initializer, known as tentative definitions in the C standard. Tentative definitions are distinct from declarations of a variable with the extern keyword, which do not allocate storage. Unix C compilers have traditionally allocated storage for uninitialized global variables in a common block. This allows the linker to resolve all tentative definitions of the same variable in different compilation units to the same object, or to a non-tentative definition. This is the behavior specified by -fcommon, and is the default for GCC on most targets. On the other hand, this behavior is not required by ISO C, and on some targets may carry a speed or code size penalty on variable references. The -fno-common option specifies that the compiler should instead place uninitialized global variables in the BSS section of the object file. This inhibits the merging of tentative definitions by the linker so you get a multiple-definition error if the same variable is defined in more than one compilation unit. Compiling with -fno-common is useful on targets for which it provides better performance, or if you wish to verify that the program will work on other systems that always treat uninitialized variable definitions 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. The added comments include: * information on the compiler version and command-line options, * the source code lines associated with the assembly instructions, in the form FILENAME:LINENUMBER:CONTENT OF LINE, * hints on which high-level expressions correspond to the various assembly instruction operands. For example, given this C source file: int test (int n) { int i; int total = 0; for (i = 0; i < n; i++) total += i * i; return total; } compiling to (x86_64) assembly via -S and emitting the result direct to stdout via -o - gcc -S test.c -fverbose-asm -Os -o - gives output similar to this: .file "test.c" # GNU C11 (GCC) version 7.0.0 20160809 (experimental) (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) [...snip...] # options passed: [...snip...] .text .globl test .type test, @function test: .LFB0: .cfi_startproc # test.c:4: int total = 0; xorl %eax, %eax # # test.c:6: for (i = 0; i < n; i++) xorl %edx, %edx # i .L2: # test.c:6: for (i = 0; i < n; i++) cmpl %edi, %edx # n, i jge .L5 #, # test.c:7: total += i * i; movl %edx, %ecx # i, tmp92 imull %edx, %ecx # i, tmp92 # test.c:6: for (i = 0; i < n; i++) incl %edx # i # test.c:7: total += i * i; addl %ecx, %eax # tmp92, jmp .L2 # .L5: # test.c:10: } ret .cfi_endproc .LFE0: .size test, .-test .ident "GCC: (GNU) 7.0.0 20160809 (experimental)" .section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits The comments are intended for humans rather than machines and hence the precise format of the comments is subject to change. -frecord-gcc-switches This switch causes the command line used to invoke the compiler to be recorded into the object file that is being created. This switch is only implemented on some targets and the exact format of the recording is target and binary file format dependent, but it usually takes the form of a section containing ASCII text. This switch is related to the -fverbose-asm switch, but that switch only records information in the assembler output file as comments, so it never reaches the object file. See also -grecord-gcc-switches for another way of storing compiler options into the object file. -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, 28k on AArch64 and 32k on the m68k and RS/6000. The x86 has no such limit.) Position-independent code requires special support, and therefore works only on certain machines. For the x86, 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 AArch64, 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. -fpie -fPIE These options are similar to -fpic and -fPIC, but the generated position-independent code can be only linked into executables. Usually these options are used to compile code that will be linked using the -pie GCC option. -fpie and -fPIE both define the macros __pie__ and __PIE__. The macros have the value 1 for -fpie and 2 for -fPIE. -fno-plt Do not use the PLT for external function calls in position-independent code. Instead, load the callee address at call sites from the GOT and branch to it. This leads to more efficient code by eliminating PLT stubs and exposing GOT loads to optimizations. On architectures such as 32-bit x86 where PLT stubs expect the GOT pointer in a specific register, this gives more register allocation freedom to the compiler. Lazy binding requires use of the PLT; with -fno-plt all external symbols are resolved at load time. Alternatively, the function attribute noplt can be used to avoid calls through the PLT for specific external functions. In position-dependent code, a few targets also convert calls to functions that are marked to not use the PLT to use the GOT instead. -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 that 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 do not save and restore the register reg. It is an error to use 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 produces 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 save and restore the register reg if they use it. It is an error to use 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 produces disastrous results. A different sort of disaster results 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 are 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. -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 (see Thread-Local). The model argument should be one of 'global-dynamic', 'local-dynamic', 'initial-exec' or 'local-exec'. Note that the choice is subject to optimization: the compiler may use a more efficient model for symbols not visible outside of the translation unit, or if -fpic is not given on the command line. The default without -fpic is 'initial-exec'; with -fpic the default is 'global-dynamic'. -ftrampolines For targets that normally need trampolines for nested functions, always generate them instead of using descriptors. Otherwise, for targets that do not need them, like for example HP-PA or IA-64, do nothing. A trampoline is a small piece of code that is created at run time on the stack when the address of a nested function is taken, and is used to call the nested function indirectly. Therefore, it requires the stack to be made executable in order for the program to work properly. -fno-trampolines is enabled by default on a language by language basis to let the compiler avoid generating them, if it computes that this is safe, and replace them with descriptors. Descriptors are made up of data only, but the generated code must be prepared to deal with them. As of this writing, -fno-trampolines is enabled by default only for Ada. Moreover, code compiled with -ftrampolines and code compiled with -fno-trampolines are not binary compatible if nested functions are present. This option must therefore be used on a program-wide basis and be manipulated with extreme care. -fvisibility=[default|internal|hidden|protected] Set the default ELF image symbol visibility to the specified option—all symbols are 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; i.e., 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 is 'hidden'. The default if -fvisibility isn't specified is 'default', i.e., make every symbol public. 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 https://www.akkadia.org/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 DLLs 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; i.e., 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 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 is be thrown between DSOs must be explicitly marked with default visibility so that the 'type_info' nodes are unified between the DSOs. An overview of these techniques, their benefits and how to use them is at http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility. -fstrict-volatile-bitfields This option should be used if accesses to volatile bit-fields (or other structure fields, although the compiler usually honors those types anyway) should use a single access of the width of the field's type, aligned to a natural alignment if possible. For example, targets with memory-mapped peripheral registers might require all such accesses to be 16 bits wide; with this flag you can declare all peripheral bit-fields as unsigned short (assuming short is 16 bits on these targets) to force GCC to use 16-bit accesses instead of, perhaps, a more efficient 32-bit access. If this option is disabled, the compiler uses the most efficient instruction. In the previous example, that might be a 32-bit load instruction, even though that accesses bytes that do not contain any portion of the bit-field, or memory-mapped registers unrelated to the one being updated. In some cases, such as when the packed attribute is applied to a structure field, it may not be possible to access the field with a single read or write that is correctly aligned for the target machine. In this case GCC falls back to generating multiple accesses rather than code that will fault or truncate the result at run time. Note: Due to restrictions of the C/C++11 memory model, write accesses are not allowed to touch non bit-field members. It is therefore recommended to define all bits of the field's type as bit-field members. The default value of this option is determined by the application binary interface for the target processor. -fsync-libcalls This option controls whether any out-of-line instance of the __sync family of functions may be used to implement the C++11 __atomic family of functions. The default value of this option is enabled, thus the only useful form of the option is -fno-sync-libcalls. This option is used in the implementation of the libatomic runtime library. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Developer Options, Previous: Directory Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Submodel Options Link: prev: Code Gen Options Next: Submodel Options, Previous: Code Gen Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.17 GCC Developer Options This section describes command-line options that are primarily of interest to GCC developers, including options to support compiler testing and investigation of compiler bugs and compile-time performance problems. This includes options that produce debug dumps at various points in the compilation; that print statistics such as memory use and execution time; and that print information about GCC's configuration, such as where it searches for libraries. You should rarely need to use any of these options for ordinary compilation and linking tasks. Many developer options that cause GCC to dump output to a file take an optional '=filename' suffix. You can specify 'stdout' or '-' to dump to standard output, and 'stderr' for standard error. If '=filename' is omitted, a default dump file name is constructed by concatenating the base dump file name, a pass number, phase letter, and pass name. The base dump file name is the name of output file produced by the compiler if explicitly specified and not an executable; otherwise it is the source file name. The pass number is determined by the order passes are registered with the compiler's pass manager. This is generally the same as the order of execution, but passes registered by plugins, target-specific passes, or passes that are otherwise registered late are numbered higher than the pass named 'final', even if they are executed earlier. The phase letter is one of 'i' (inter-procedural analysis), 'l' (language-specific), 'r' (RTL), or 't' (tree). The files are created in the directory of the output file. -dletters -fdump-rtl-pass -fdump-rtl-pass=filename Says to make debugging dumps during compilation at times specified by letters. This is used for debugging the RTL-based passes of the compiler. Some -dletters switches have different meaning when -E is used for preprocessing. See Preprocessor Options, for information about preprocessor-specific dump options. Debug dumps can be enabled with a -fdump-rtl switch or some -d option letters. Here are the possible letters for use in pass and letters, and their meanings: -fdump-rtl-alignments Dump after branch alignments have been computed. -fdump-rtl-asmcons Dump after fixing rtl statements that have unsatisfied in/out constraints. -fdump-rtl-auto_inc_dec Dump after auto-inc-dec discovery. This pass is only run on architectures that have auto inc or auto dec instructions. -fdump-rtl-barriers Dump after cleaning up the barrier instructions. -fdump-rtl-bbpart Dump after partitioning hot and cold basic blocks. -fdump-rtl-bbro Dump after block reordering. -fdump-rtl-btl1 -fdump-rtl-btl2 -fdump-rtl-btl1 and -fdump-rtl-btl2 enable dumping after the two branch target load optimization passes. -fdump-rtl-bypass Dump after jump bypassing and control flow optimizations. -fdump-rtl-combine Dump after the RTL instruction combination pass. -fdump-rtl-compgotos Dump after duplicating the computed gotos. -fdump-rtl-ce1 -fdump-rtl-ce2 -fdump-rtl-ce3 -fdump-rtl-ce1, -fdump-rtl-ce2, and -fdump-rtl-ce3 enable dumping after the three if conversion passes. -fdump-rtl-cprop_hardreg Dump after hard register copy propagation. -fdump-rtl-csa Dump after combining stack adjustments. -fdump-rtl-cse1 -fdump-rtl-cse2 -fdump-rtl-cse1 and -fdump-rtl-cse2 enable dumping after the two common subexpression elimination passes. -fdump-rtl-dce Dump after the standalone dead code elimination passes. -fdump-rtl-dbr Dump after delayed branch scheduling. -fdump-rtl-dce1 -fdump-rtl-dce2 -fdump-rtl-dce1 and -fdump-rtl-dce2 enable dumping after the two dead store elimination passes. -fdump-rtl-eh Dump after finalization of EH handling code. -fdump-rtl-eh_ranges Dump after conversion of EH handling range regions. -fdump-rtl-expand Dump after RTL generation. -fdump-rtl-fwprop1 -fdump-rtl-fwprop2 -fdump-rtl-fwprop1 and -fdump-rtl-fwprop2 enable dumping after the two forward propagation passes. -fdump-rtl-gcse1 -fdump-rtl-gcse2 -fdump-rtl-gcse1 and -fdump-rtl-gcse2 enable dumping after global common subexpression elimination. -fdump-rtl-init-regs Dump after the initialization of the registers. -fdump-rtl-initvals Dump after the computation of the initial value sets. -fdump-rtl-into_cfglayout Dump after converting to cfglayout mode. -fdump-rtl-ira Dump after iterated register allocation. -fdump-rtl-jump Dump after the second jump optimization. -fdump-rtl-loop2 -fdump-rtl-loop2 enables dumping after the rtl loop optimization passes. -fdump-rtl-mach Dump after performing the machine dependent reorganization pass, if that pass exists. -fdump-rtl-mode_sw Dump after removing redundant mode switches. -fdump-rtl-rnreg Dump after register renumbering. -fdump-rtl-outof_cfglayout Dump after converting from cfglayout mode. -fdump-rtl-peephole2 Dump after the peephole pass. -fdump-rtl-postreload Dump after post-reload optimizations. -fdump-rtl-pro_and_epilogue Dump after generating the function prologues and epilogues. -fdump-rtl-sched1 -fdump-rtl-sched2 -fdump-rtl-sched1 and -fdump-rtl-sched2 enable dumping after the basic block scheduling passes. -fdump-rtl-ree Dump after sign/zero extension elimination. -fdump-rtl-seqabstr Dump after common sequence discovery. -fdump-rtl-shorten Dump after shortening branches. -fdump-rtl-sibling Dump after sibling call optimizations. -fdump-rtl-split1 -fdump-rtl-split2 -fdump-rtl-split3 -fdump-rtl-split4 -fdump-rtl-split5 These options enable dumping after five rounds of instruction splitting. -fdump-rtl-sms Dump after modulo scheduling. This pass is only run on some architectures. -fdump-rtl-stack Dump after conversion from GCC's “flat register file” registers to the x87's stack-like registers. This pass is only run on x86 variants. -fdump-rtl-subreg1 -fdump-rtl-subreg2 -fdump-rtl-subreg1 and -fdump-rtl-subreg2 enable dumping after the two subreg expansion passes. -fdump-rtl-unshare Dump after all rtl has been unshared. -fdump-rtl-vartrack Dump after variable tracking. -fdump-rtl-vregs Dump after converting virtual registers to hard registers. -fdump-rtl-web Dump after live range splitting. -fdump-rtl-regclass -fdump-rtl-subregs_of_mode_init -fdump-rtl-subregs_of_mode_finish -fdump-rtl-dfinit -fdump-rtl-dfinish These dumps are defined but always produce empty files. -da -fdump-rtl-all Produce all the dumps listed above. -dA Annotate the assembler output with miscellaneous debugging information. -dD Dump all macro definitions, at the end of preprocessing, in addition to normal output. -dH Produce a core dump whenever an error occurs. -dp Annotate the assembler output with a comment indicating which pattern and alternative is used. The length and cost of each instruction are also printed. -dP Dump the RTL in the assembler output as a comment before each instruction. Also turns on -dp annotation. -dx Just generate RTL for a function instead of compiling it. Usually used with -fdump-rtl-expand. -fdump-debug Dump debugging information generated during the debug generation phase. -fdump-earlydebug Dump debugging information generated during the early debug generation phase. -fdump-noaddr When doing debugging dumps, 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. -freport-bug Collect and dump debug information into a temporary file if an internal compiler error (ICE) occurs. -fdump-unnumbered When doing debugging dumps, suppress instruction numbers 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-unnumbered-links When doing debugging dumps (see -d option above), suppress instruction numbers for the links to the previous and next instructions in a sequence. -fdump-ipa-switch -fdump-ipa-switch-options 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, and the file is created in the same directory as the output file. The following dumps are possible: 'all' Enables all inter-procedural analysis dumps. 'cgraph' Dumps information about call-graph optimization, unused function removal, and inlining decisions. 'inline' Dump after function inlining. Additionally, the options -optimized, -missed, -note, and -all can be provided, with the same meaning as for -fopt-info, defaulting to -optimized. For example, -fdump-ipa-inline-optimized-missed will emit information on callsites that were inlined, along with callsites that were not inlined. By default, the dump will contain messages about successful optimizations (equivalent to -optimized) together with low-level details about the analysis. -fdump-lang-all -fdump-lang-switch -fdump-lang-switch-options -fdump-lang-switch-options=filename Control the dumping of language-specific information. The options and filename portions behave as described in the -fdump-tree option. The following switch values are accepted: 'all' Enable all language-specific dumps. 'class' Dump class hierarchy information. Virtual table information is emitted unless 'slim' is specified. This option is applicable to C++ only. 'raw' Dump the raw internal tree data. This option is applicable to C++ only. -fdump-passes Print on stderr the list of optimization passes that are turned on and off by the current command-line options. -fdump-statistics-option Enable and control dumping of pass statistics in a separate file. The file name is generated by appending a suffix ending in '.statistics' to the source file name, and the file is created in the same directory as the output file. If the '-option' form is used, '-stats' causes counters to be summed over the whole compilation unit while '-details' dumps every event as the passes generate them. The default with no option is to sum counters for each function compiled. -fdump-tree-all -fdump-tree-switch -fdump-tree-switch-options -fdump-tree-switch-options=filename Control the dumping at various stages of processing the intermediate language tree to a file. If the '-options' form is used, options is a list of '-' separated options which control the details of the dump. Not all options are applicable to all dumps; those that are not meaningful are 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. 'asmname' If DECL_ASSEMBLER_NAME has been set for a given decl, use that in the dump instead of DECL_NAME. Its primary use is ease of use working backward from mangled names in the assembly file. 'slim' When dumping front-end intermediate representations, 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. When dumping RTL, print the RTL in slim (condensed) form instead of the default LISP-like representation. '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). Also include information from the optimization passes. 'stats' Enable dumping various statistics about the pass (not honored by every dump option). 'blocks' Enable showing basic block boundaries (disabled in raw dumps). 'graph' For each of the other indicated dump files (-fdump-rtl-pass), dump a representation of the control flow graph suitable for viewing with GraphViz to file.passid.pass.dot. Each function in the file is pretty-printed as a subgraph, so that GraphViz can render them all in a single plot. This option currently only works for RTL dumps, and the RTL is always dumped in slim form. '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. 'verbose' Enable showing the tree dump for each statement. 'eh' Enable showing the EH region number holding each statement. 'scev' Enable showing scalar evolution analysis details. 'optimized' Enable showing optimization information (only available in certain passes). 'missed' Enable showing missed optimization information (only available in certain passes). 'note' Enable other detailed optimization information (only available in certain passes). 'all' Turn on all options, except raw, slim, verbose and lineno. 'optall' Turn on all optimization options, i.e., optimized, missed, and note. To determine what tree dumps are available or find the dump for a pass of interest follow the steps below. 1. Invoke GCC with -fdump-passes and in the stderr output look for a code that corresponds to the pass you are interested in. For example, the codes tree-evrp, tree-vrp1, and tree-vrp2 correspond to the three Value Range Propagation passes. The number at the end distinguishes distinct invocations of the same pass. 2. To enable the creation of the dump file, append the pass code to the -fdump- option prefix and invoke GCC with it. For example, to enable the dump from the Early Value Range Propagation pass, invoke GCC with the -fdump-tree-evrp option. Optionally, you may specify the name of the dump file. If you don't specify one, GCC creates as described below. 3. Find the pass dump in a file whose name is composed of three components separated by a period: the name of the source file GCC was invoked to compile, a numeric suffix indicating the pass number followed by the letter 't' for tree passes (and the letter 'r' for RTL passes), and finally the pass code. For example, the Early VRP pass dump might be in a file named myfile.c.038t.evrp in the current working directory. Note that the numeric codes are not stable and may change from one version of GCC to another. -fopt-info -fopt-info-options -fopt-info-options=filename Controls optimization dumps from various optimization passes. If the '-options' form is used, options is a list of '-' separated option keywords to select the dump details and optimizations. The options can be divided into three groups: 1. options describing what kinds of messages should be emitted, 2. options describing the verbosity of the dump, and 3. options describing which optimizations should be included. The options from each group can be freely mixed as they are non-overlapping. However, in case of any conflicts, the later options override the earlier options on the command line. The following options control which kinds of messages should be emitted: 'optimized' Print information when an optimization is successfully applied. It is up to a pass to decide which information is relevant. For example, the vectorizer passes print the source location of loops which are successfully vectorized. 'missed' Print information about missed optimizations. Individual passes control which information to include in the output. 'note' Print verbose information about optimizations, such as certain transformations, more detailed messages about decisions etc. 'all' Print detailed optimization information. This includes 'optimized', 'missed', and 'note'. The following option controls the dump verbosity: 'internals' By default, only “high-level” messages are emitted. This option enables additional, more detailed, messages, which are likely to only be of interest to GCC developers. One or more of the following option keywords can be used to describe a group of optimizations: 'ipa' Enable dumps from all interprocedural optimizations. 'loop' Enable dumps from all loop optimizations. 'inline' Enable dumps from all inlining optimizations. 'omp' Enable dumps from all OMP (Offloading and Multi Processing) optimizations. 'vec' Enable dumps from all vectorization optimizations. 'optall' Enable dumps from all optimizations. This is a superset of the optimization groups listed above. If options is omitted, it defaults to 'optimized-optall', which means to dump messages about successful optimizations from all the passes, omitting messages that are treated as “internals”. If the filename is provided, then the dumps from all the applicable optimizations are concatenated into the filename. Otherwise the dump is output onto stderr. Though multiple -fopt-info options are accepted, only one of them can include a filename. If other filenames are provided then all but the first such option are ignored. Note that the output filename is overwritten in case of multiple translation units. If a combined output from multiple translation units is desired, stderr should be used instead. In the following example, the optimization info is output to stderr: gcc -O3 -fopt-info This example: gcc -O3 -fopt-info-missed=missed.all outputs missed optimization report from all the passes into missed.all, and this one: gcc -O2 -ftree-vectorize -fopt-info-vec-missed prints information about missed optimization opportunities from vectorization passes on stderr. Note that -fopt-info-vec-missed is equivalent to -fopt-info-missed-vec. The order of the optimization group names and message types listed after -fopt-info does not matter. As another example, gcc -O3 -fopt-info-inline-optimized-missed=inline.txt outputs information about missed optimizations as well as optimized locations from all the inlining passes into inline.txt. Finally, consider: gcc -fopt-info-vec-missed=vec.miss -fopt-info-loop-optimized=loop.opt Here the two output filenames vec.miss and loop.opt are in conflict since only one output file is allowed. In this case, only the first option takes effect and the subsequent options are ignored. Thus only vec.miss is produced which contains dumps from the vectorizer about missed opportunities. -fsave-optimization-record Write a SRCFILE.opt-record.json.gz file detailing what optimizations were performed, for those optimizations that support -fopt-info. This option is experimental and the format of the data within the compressed JSON file is subject to change. It is roughly equivalent to a machine-readable version of -fopt-info-all, as a collection of messages with source file, line number and column number, with the following additional data for each message: * the execution count of the code being optimized, along with metadata about whether this was from actual profile data, or just an estimate, allowing consumers to prioritize messages by code hotness, * the function name of the code being optimized, where applicable, * the “inlining chain” for the code being optimized, so that when a function is inlined into several different places (which might themselves be inlined), the reader can distinguish between the copies, * objects identifying those parts of the message that refer to expressions, statements or symbol-table nodes, which of these categories they are, and, when available, their source code location, * the GCC pass that emitted the message, and * the location in GCC's own code from which the message was emitted Additionally, some messages are logically nested within other messages, reflecting implementation details of the optimization passes. -fsched-verbose=n On targets that use instruction scheduling, this option controls the amount of debugging output the scheduler prints to the dump files. For n greater than zero, -fsched-verbose outputs the same information as -fdump-rtl-sched1 and -fdump-rtl-sched2. 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. -fenable-kind-pass -fdisable-kind-pass=range-list This is a set of options that are used to explicitly disable/enable optimization passes. These options are intended for use for debugging GCC. Compiler users should use regular options for enabling/disabling passes instead. -fdisable-ipa-pass Disable IPA pass pass. pass is the pass name. If the same pass is statically invoked in the compiler multiple times, the pass name should be appended with a sequential number starting from 1. -fdisable-rtl-pass -fdisable-rtl-pass=range-list Disable RTL pass pass. pass is the pass name. If the same pass is statically invoked in the compiler multiple times, the pass name should be appended with a sequential number starting from 1. range-list is a comma-separated list of function ranges or assembler names. Each range is a number pair separated by a colon. The range is inclusive in both ends. If the range is trivial, the number pair can be simplified as a single number. If the function's call graph node's uid falls within one of the specified ranges, the pass is disabled for that function. The uid is shown in the function header of a dump file, and the pass names can be dumped by using option -fdump-passes. -fdisable-tree-pass -fdisable-tree-pass=range-list Disable tree pass pass. See -fdisable-rtl for the description of option arguments. -fenable-ipa-pass Enable IPA pass pass. pass is the pass name. If the same pass is statically invoked in the compiler multiple times, the pass name should be appended with a sequential number starting from 1. -fenable-rtl-pass -fenable-rtl-pass=range-list Enable RTL pass pass. See -fdisable-rtl for option argument description and examples. -fenable-tree-pass -fenable-tree-pass=range-list Enable tree pass pass. See -fdisable-rtl for the description of option arguments. Here are some examples showing uses of these options. # disable ccp1 for all functions -fdisable-tree-ccp1 # disable complete unroll for function whose cgraph node uid is 1 -fenable-tree-cunroll=1 # disable gcse2 for functions at the following ranges [1,1], # [300,400], and [400,1000] # disable gcse2 for functions foo and foo2 -fdisable-rtl-gcse2=foo,foo2 # disable early inlining -fdisable-tree-einline # disable ipa inlining -fdisable-ipa-inline # enable tree full unroll -fenable-tree-unroll -fchecking -fchecking=n Enable internal consistency checking. The default depends on the compiler configuration. -fchecking=2 enables further internal consistency checking that might affect code generation. -frandom-seed=string This option provides a seed that GCC uses in place of random numbers in generating 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 can either be a number (decimal, octal or hex) or an arbitrary string (in which case it's converted to a number by computing CRC32). The string should be different for every file you compile. -save-temps -save-temps=cwd 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 produces 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. If you invoke GCC in parallel, compiling several different source files that share a common base name in different subdirectories or the same source file compiled for multiple output destinations, it is likely that the different parallel compilers will interfere with each other, and overwrite the temporary files. For instance: gcc -save-temps -o outdir1/foo.o indir1/foo.c& gcc -save-temps -o outdir2/foo.o indir2/foo.c& may result in foo.i and foo.o being written to simultaneously by both compilers. -save-temps=obj Store the usual “temporary” intermediate files permanently. If the -o option is used, the temporary files are based on the object file. If the -o option is not used, the -save-temps=obj switch behaves like -save-temps. For example: gcc -save-temps=obj -c foo.c gcc -save-temps=obj -c bar.c -o dir/xbar.o gcc -save-temps=obj foobar.c -o dir2/yfoobar creates foo.i, foo.s, dir/xbar.i, dir/xbar.s, dir2/yfoobar.i, dir2/yfoobar.s, and dir2/yfoobar.o. -time[=file] 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). Without the specification of an output file, 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. With the specification of an output file, the output is appended to the named file, and it looks like this: 0.12 0.01 cc1 options 0.00 0.01 as options The “user time” and the “system time” are moved before the program name, and the options passed to the program are displayed, so that one can later tell what file was being compiled, and with which options. -fdump-final-insns[=file] Dump the final internal representation (RTL) to file. If the optional argument is omitted (or if file is .), the name of the dump file is determined by appending .gkd to the compilation output file name. -fcompare-debug[=opts] If no error occurs during compilation, run the compiler a second time, adding opts and -fcompare-debug-second to the arguments passed to the second compilation. Dump the final internal representation in both compilations, and print an error if they differ. If the equal sign is omitted, the default -gtoggle is used. The environment variable GCC_COMPARE_DEBUG, if defined, non-empty and nonzero, implicitly enables -fcompare-debug. If GCC_COMPARE_DEBUG is defined to a string starting with a dash, then it is used for opts, otherwise the default -gtoggle is used. -fcompare-debug=, with the equal sign but without opts, is equivalent to -fno-compare-debug, which disables the dumping of the final representation and the second compilation, preventing even GCC_COMPARE_DEBUG from taking effect. To verify full coverage during -fcompare-debug testing, set GCC_COMPARE_DEBUG to say -fcompare-debug-not-overridden, which GCC rejects as an invalid option in any actual compilation (rather than preprocessing, assembly or linking). To get just a warning, setting GCC_COMPARE_DEBUG to '-w%n-fcompare-debug not overridden' will do. -fcompare-debug-second This option is implicitly passed to the compiler for the second compilation requested by -fcompare-debug, along with options to silence warnings, and omitting other options that would cause the compiler to produce output to files or to standard output as a side effect. Dump files and preserved temporary files are renamed so as to contain the .gk additional extension during the second compilation, to avoid overwriting those generated by the first. When this option is passed to the compiler driver, it causes the first compilation to be skipped, which makes it useful for little other than debugging the compiler proper. -gtoggle Turn off generation of debug info, if leaving out this option generates it, or turn it on at level 2 otherwise. The position of this argument in the command line does not matter; it takes effect after all other options are processed, and it does so only once, no matter how many times it is given. This is mainly intended to be used with -fcompare-debug. -fvar-tracking-assignments-toggle Toggle -fvar-tracking-assignments, in the same way that -gtoggle toggles -g. -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. -ftime-report-details Record the time consumed by infrastructure parts separately for each pass. -fira-verbose=n Control the verbosity of the dump file for the integrated register allocator. The default value is 5. If the value n is greater or equal to 10, the dump output is sent to stderr using the same format as n minus 10. -flto-report Prints a report with internal details on the workings of the link-time optimizer. The contents of this report vary from version to version. It is meant to be useful to GCC developers when processing object files in LTO mode (via -flto). Disabled by default. -flto-report-wpa Like -flto-report, but only print for the WPA phase of Link Time Optimization. -fmem-report Makes the compiler print some statistics about permanent memory allocation when it finishes. -fmem-report-wpa Makes the compiler print some statistics about permanent memory allocation for the WPA phase only. -fpre-ipa-mem-report -fpost-ipa-mem-report Makes the compiler print some statistics about permanent memory allocation before or after interprocedural optimization. -fprofile-report Makes the compiler print some statistics about consistency of the (estimated) profile and effect of individual passes. -fstack-usage Makes the compiler output stack usage information for the program, on a per-function basis. The filename for the dump is made by appending .su to the auxname. auxname 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. An entry is made up of three fields: * The name of the function. * A number of bytes. * One or more qualifiers: static, dynamic, bounded. The qualifier static means that the function manipulates the stack statically: a fixed number of bytes are allocated for the frame on function entry and released on function exit; no stack adjustments are otherwise made in the function. The second field is this fixed number of bytes. The qualifier dynamic means that the function manipulates the stack dynamically: in addition to the static allocation described above, stack adjustments are made in the body of the function, for example to push/pop arguments around function calls. If the qualifier bounded is also present, the amount of these adjustments is bounded at compile time and the second field is an upper bound of the total amount of stack used by the function. If it is not present, the amount of these adjustments is not bounded at compile time and the second field only represents the bounded part. -fstats Emit statistics about front-end processing at the end of the compilation. This option is supported only by the C++ front end, and the information is generally only useful to the G++ development team. -fdbg-cnt-list Print the name and the counter upper bound for all debug counters. -fdbg-cnt=counter-value-list Set the internal debug counter lower and upper bound. counter-value-list is a comma-separated list of name:lower_bound:upper_bound tuples which sets the lower and the upper bound of each debug counter name. The lower_bound is optional and is zero initialized if not set. All debug counters have the initial upper bound of UINT_MAX; thus dbg_cnt returns true always unless the upper bound is set by this option. For example, with -fdbg-cnt=dce:2:4,tail_call:10, dbg_cnt(dce) returns true only for third and fourth invocation. For dbg_cnt(tail_call) true is returned for first 10 invocations. -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 '-', without spaces between multiple switches. This is supposed to ease shell processing. -print-multi-os-directory Print the path to OS libraries for the selected multilib, relative to some lib subdirectory. If OS libraries are present in the lib subdirectory and no multilibs are used, this is usually just ., if OS libraries are present in libsuffix sibling directories this prints e.g. ../lib64, ../lib or ../lib32, or if OS libraries are present in lib/subdir subdirectories it prints e.g. amd64, sparcv9 or ev6. -print-multiarch Print the path to OS libraries for the selected multiarch, relative to some lib subdirectory. -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 searches—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 '/'. See Environment Variables. -print-sysroot Print the target sysroot directory that is used during compilation. This is the target sysroot specified either at configure time or using the --sysroot option, possibly with an extra suffix that depends on compilation options. If no target sysroot is specified, the option prints nothing. -print-sysroot-headers-suffix Print the suffix added to the target sysroot when searching for headers, or give an error if the compiler is not configured with such a suffix—and don't do anything else. -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, 6.3.0 or 7)—and don't do anything else. This is the compiler version used in filesystem paths and specs. Depending on how the compiler has been configured it can be just a single number (major version), two numbers separated by a dot (major and minor version) or three numbers separated by dots (major, minor and patchlevel version). -dumpfullversion Print the full compiler version—and don't do anything else. The output is always three numbers separated by dots, major, minor and patchlevel version. -dumpspecs Print the compiler's built-in specs—and don't do anything else. (This is used when GCC itself is being built.) See Spec Files. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Submodel Options, Previous: Code Gen Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: AArch64 Options Link: prev: Developer Options Next: Spec Files, Previous: Developer Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18 Machine-Dependent Options Each target machine supported by GCC can have its own options—for example, to allow you to compile for a particular processor variant or ABI, or to control optimizations specific to that machine. By convention, the names of machine-specific options start with '-m'. Some configurations of the compiler also support additional target-specific options, usually for compatibility with other compilers on the same platform. • AArch64 Options: • Adapteva Epiphany Options: • AMD GCN Options: • ARC Options: • ARM Options: • AVR Options: • Blackfin Options: • C6X Options: • CRIS Options: • CR16 Options: • C-SKY Options: • Darwin Options: • DEC Alpha Options: • FR30 Options: • FT32 Options: • FRV Options: • GNU/Linux Options: • H8/300 Options: • HPPA Options: • IA-64 Options: • LM32 Options: • M32C Options: • M32R/D Options: • M680x0 Options: • MCore Options: • MeP Options: • MicroBlaze Options: • MIPS Options: • MMIX Options: • MN10300 Options: • Moxie Options: • MSP430 Options: • NDS32 Options: • Nios II Options: • Nvidia PTX Options: • OpenRISC Options: • PDP-11 Options: • picoChip Options: • PowerPC Options: • RISC-V Options: • RL78 Options: • RS/6000 and PowerPC Options: • RX Options: • S/390 and zSeries Options: • Score Options: • SH Options: • Solaris 2 Options: • SPARC Options: • SPU Options: • System V Options: • TILE-Gx Options: • TILEPro Options: • V850 Options: • VAX Options: • Visium Options: • VMS Options: • VxWorks Options: • x86 Options: • x86 Windows Options: • Xstormy16 Options: • Xtensa Options: • zSeries Options: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Spec Files, Previous: Developer Options, Up: Invoking GCC Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: ARC Options Link: prev: Adapteva Epiphany Options Next: ARC Options, Previous: Adapteva Epiphany Options, Up: Submodel ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.3 AMD GCN Options These options are defined specifically for the AMD GCN port. -march=gpu -mtune=gpu Set architecture type or tuning for gpu. Supported values for gpu are 'fiji' Compile for GCN3 Fiji devices (gfx803). 'gfx900' Compile for GCN5 Vega 10 devices (gfx900). -mstack-size=bytes Specify how many bytes of stack space will be requested for each GPU thread (wave-front). Beware that there may be many threads and limited memory available. The size of the stack allocation may also have an impact on run-time performance. The default is 32KB when using OpenACC or OpenMP, and 1MB otherwise. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: Darwin Options Link: prev: CR16 Options Next: Darwin Options, Previous: CR16 Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.11 C-SKY Options GCC supports these options when compiling for C-SKY V2 processors. -march=arch Specify the C-SKY target architecture. Valid values for arch are: 'ck801', 'ck802', 'ck803', 'ck807', and 'ck810'. The default is 'ck810'. -mcpu=cpu Specify the C-SKY target processor. Valid values for cpu are: 'ck801', 'ck801t', 'ck802', 'ck802t', 'ck802j', 'ck803', 'ck803h', 'ck803t', 'ck803ht', 'ck803f', 'ck803fh', 'ck803e', 'ck803eh', 'ck803et', 'ck803eht', 'ck803ef', 'ck803efh', 'ck803ft', 'ck803eft', 'ck803efht', 'ck803r1', 'ck803hr1', 'ck803tr1', 'ck803htr1', 'ck803fr1', 'ck803fhr1', 'ck803er1', 'ck803ehr1', 'ck803etr1', 'ck803ehtr1', 'ck803efr1', 'ck803efhr1', 'ck803ftr1', 'ck803eftr1', 'ck803efhtr1', 'ck803s', 'ck803st', 'ck803se', 'ck803sf', 'ck803sef', 'ck803seft', 'ck807e', 'ck807ef', 'ck807', 'ck807f', 'ck810e', 'ck810et', 'ck810ef', 'ck810eft', 'ck810', 'ck810v', 'ck810f', 'ck810t', 'ck810fv', 'ck810tv', 'ck810ft', and 'ck810ftv'. -mbig-endian -EB -mlittle-endian -EL Select big- or little-endian code. The default is little-endian. -mhard-float -msoft-float Select hardware or software floating-point implementations. The default is soft float. -mdouble-float -mno-double-float When -mhard-float is in effect, enable generation of double-precision float instructions. This is the default except when compiling for CK803. -mfdivdu -mno-fdivdu When -mhard-float is in effect, enable generation of frecipd, fsqrtd, and fdivd instructions. This is the default except when compiling for CK803. -mfpu=fpu Select the floating-point processor. This option can only be used with -mhard-float. Values for fpu are 'fpv2_sf' (equivalent to '-mno-double-float -mno-fdivdu'), 'fpv2' ('-mdouble-float -mno-divdu'), and 'fpv2_divd' ('-mdouble-float -mdivdu'). -melrw -mno-elrw Enable the extended lrw instruction. This option defaults to on for CK801 and off otherwise. -mistack -mno-istack Enable interrupt stack instructions; the default is off. The -mistack option is required to handle the interrupt and isr function attributes (see C-SKY Function Attributes). -mmp Enable multiprocessor instructions; the default is off. -mcp Enable coprocessor instructions; the default is off. -mcache Enable coprocessor instructions; the default is off. -msecurity Enable C-SKY security instructions; the default is off. -mtrust Enable C-SKY trust instructions; the default is off. -mdsp -medsp -mvdsp Enable C-SKY DSP, Enhanced DSP, or Vector DSP instructions, respectively. All of these options default to off. -mdiv -mno-div Generate divide instructions. Default is off. -msmart -mno-smart Generate code for Smart Mode, using only registers numbered 0-7 to allow use of 16-bit instructions. This option is ignored for CK801 where this is the required behavior, and it defaults to on for CK802. For other targets, the default is off. -mhigh-registers -mno-high-registers Generate code using the high registers numbered 16-31. This option is not supported on CK801, CK802, or CK803, and is enabled by default for other processors. -manchor -mno-anchor Generate code using global anchor symbol addresses. -mpushpop -mno-pushpop Generate code using push and pop instructions. This option defaults to on. -mmultiple-stld -mstm -mno-multiple-stld -mno-stm Generate code using stm and ldm instructions. This option isn't supported on CK801 but is enabled by default on other processors. -mconstpool -mno-constpool Create constant pools in the compiler instead of deferring it to the assembler. This option is the default and required for correct code generation on CK801 and CK802, and is optional on other processors. -mstack-size -mno-stack-size Emit .stack_size directives for each function in the assembly output. This option defaults to off. -mccrt -mno-ccrt Generate code for the C-SKY compiler runtime instead of libgcc. This option defaults to off. -mbranch-cost=n Set the branch costs to roughly n instructions. The default is 1. -msched-prolog -mno-sched-prolog Permit scheduling of function prologue and epilogue sequences. Using this option can result in code that is not compliant with the C-SKY V2 ABI prologue requirements and that cannot be debugged or backtraced. It is disabled by default. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Darwin Options, Previous: CR16 Options, Up: Submodel Options Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: FRV Options Link: prev: FR30 Options Next: FRV Options, Previous: FR30 Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.15 FT32 Options These options are defined specifically for the FT32 port. -msim Specifies that the program will be run on the simulator. This causes an alternate runtime startup and library to be linked. You must not use this option when generating programs that will run on real hardware; you must provide your own runtime library for whatever I/O functions are needed. -mlra Enable Local Register Allocation. This is still experimental for FT32, so by default the compiler uses standard reload. -mnodiv Do not use div and mod instructions. -mft32b Enable use of the extended instructions of the FT32B processor. -mcompress Compress all code using the Ft32B code compression scheme. -mnopm Do not generate code that reads program memory. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: H8/300 Options Link: prev: FRV Options Next: H8/300 Options, Previous: FRV Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.17 GNU/Linux Options These '-m' options are defined for GNU/Linux targets: -mglibc Use the GNU C library. This is the default except on '*-*-linux-*uclibc*', '*-*-linux-*musl*' and '*-*-linux-*android*' targets. -muclibc Use uClibc C library. This is the default on '*-*-linux-*uclibc*' targets. -mmusl Use the musl C library. This is the default on '*-*-linux-*musl*' targets. -mbionic Use Bionic C library. This is the default on '*-*-linux-*android*' targets. -mandroid Compile code compatible with Android platform. This is the default on '*-*-linux-*android*' targets. When compiling, this option enables -mbionic, -fPIC, -fno-exceptions and -fno-rtti by default. When linking, this option makes the GCC driver pass Android-specific options to the linker. Finally, this option causes the preprocessor macro __ANDROID__ to be defined. -tno-android-cc Disable compilation effects of -mandroid, i.e., do not enable -mbionic, -fPIC, -fno-exceptions and -fno-rtti by default. -tno-android-ld Disable linking effects of -mandroid, i.e., pass standard Linux linking options to the linker. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: SH Options Link: prev: S/390 and zSeries Options Next: SH Options, Previous: S/390 and zSeries Options, Up: Submodel ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.45 Score Options These options are defined for Score implementations: -meb Compile code for big-endian mode. This is the default. -mel Compile code for little-endian mode. -mnhwloop Disable generation of bcnz instructions. -muls Enable generation of unaligned load and store instructions. -mmac Enable the use of multiply-accumulate instructions. Disabled by default. -mscore5 Specify the SCORE5 as the target architecture. -mscore5u Specify the SCORE5U of the target architecture. -mscore7 Specify the SCORE7 as the target architecture. This is the default. -mscore7d Specify the SCORE7D as the target architecture. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: SPARC Options Link: prev: SH Options Next: SPARC Options, Previous: SH Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.47 Solaris 2 Options These '-m' options are supported on Solaris 2: -mclear-hwcap -mclear-hwcap tells the compiler to remove the hardware capabilities generated by the Solaris assembler. This is only necessary when object files use ISA extensions not supported by the current machine, but check at runtime whether or not to use them. -mimpure-text -mimpure-text, used in addition to -shared, tells the compiler to not pass -z text to the linker when linking a shared object. Using this option, you can link position-dependent code into a shared object. -mimpure-text suppresses the “relocations remain against allocatable but non-writable sections” linker error message. However, the necessary relocations trigger copy-on-write, and the shared object is not actually shared across processes. Instead of using -mimpure-text, you should compile all source code with -fpic or -fPIC. These switches are supported in addition to the above on Solaris 2: -pthreads This is a synonym for -pthread. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: TILE-Gx Options Link: prev: SPU Options Next: TILE-Gx Options, Previous: SPU Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.50 Options for System V These additional options are available on System V Release 4 for compatibility with other compilers on those systems: -G Create a shared object. It is recommended that -symbolic or -shared be used instead. -Qy Identify the versions of each tool used by the compiler, in a .ident assembler directive in the output. -Qn Refrain from adding .ident directives to the output file (this is the default). -YP,dirs Search the directories dirs, and no others, for libraries specified with -l. -Ym,dir Look in the directory dir to find the M4 preprocessor. The assembler uses this option. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: x86 Windows Options Link: prev: VxWorks Options Next: x86 Windows Options, Previous: VxWorks Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.58 x86 Options These '-m' options are defined for the x86 family of computers. -march=cpu-type Generate instructions for the machine type cpu-type. In contrast to -mtune=cpu-type, which merely tunes the generated code for the specified cpu-type, -march=cpu-type allows GCC to generate code that may not run at all on processors other than the one indicated. Specifying -march=cpu-type implies -mtune=cpu-type. The choices for cpu-type are: 'native' This selects the CPU to generate code for at compilation time by determining the processor type of the compiling machine. Using -march=native enables all instruction subsets supported by the local machine (hence the result might not run on different machines). Using -mtune=native produces code optimized for the local machine under the constraints of the selected instruction set. 'x86-64' A generic CPU with 64-bit extensions. 'i386' Original Intel i386 CPU. 'i486' Intel i486 CPU. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'i586' 'pentium' Intel Pentium CPU with no MMX support. 'lakemont' Intel Lakemont MCU, based on Intel Pentium CPU. 'pentium-mmx' Intel Pentium MMX CPU, based on Pentium core with MMX instruction set support. 'pentiumpro' Intel Pentium Pro CPU. 'i686' When used with -march, the Pentium Pro instruction set is used, so the code runs on all i686 family chips. When used with -mtune, it has the same meaning as 'generic'. 'pentium2' Intel Pentium II CPU, based on Pentium Pro core with MMX instruction set support. 'pentium3' 'pentium3m' Intel Pentium III CPU, based on Pentium Pro core with MMX and SSE instruction set support. 'pentium-m' Intel Pentium M; low-power version of Intel Pentium III CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support. Used by Centrino notebooks. 'pentium4' 'pentium4m' Intel Pentium 4 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support. 'prescott' Improved version of Intel Pentium 4 CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support. 'nocona' Improved version of Intel Pentium 4 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support. 'core2' Intel Core 2 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support. 'nehalem' Intel Nehalem CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 and POPCNT instruction set support. 'westmere' Intel Westmere CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AES and PCLMUL instruction set support. 'sandybridge' Intel Sandy Bridge CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AES and PCLMUL instruction set support. 'ivybridge' Intel Ivy Bridge CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND and F16C instruction set support. 'haswell' Intel Haswell CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2 and F16C instruction set support. 'broadwell' Intel Broadwell CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX and PREFETCHW instruction set support. 'skylake' Intel Skylake CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC and XSAVES instruction set support. 'bonnell' Intel Bonnell CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support. 'silvermont' Intel Silvermont CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AES, PCLMUL and RDRND instruction set support. 'goldmont' Intel Goldmont CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AES, PCLMUL, RDRND, XSAVE, XSAVEOPT and FSGSBASE instruction set support. 'goldmont-plus' Intel Goldmont Plus CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AES, PCLMUL, RDRND, XSAVE, XSAVEOPT, FSGSBASE, PTWRITE, RDPID, SGX and UMIP instruction set support. 'tremont' Intel Tremont CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AES, PCLMUL, RDRND, XSAVE, XSAVEOPT, FSGSBASE, PTWRITE, RDPID, SGX, UMIP, GFNI-SSE, CLWB and ENCLV instruction set support. 'knl' Intel Knight's Landing CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, AVX512F, AVX512PF, AVX512ER and AVX512CD instruction set support. 'knm' Intel Knights Mill CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, AVX512F, AVX512PF, AVX512ER, AVX512CD, AVX5124VNNIW, AVX5124FMAPS and AVX512VPOPCNTDQ instruction set support. 'skylake-avx512' Intel Skylake Server CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, PKU, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, AVX512F, CLWB, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ and AVX512CD instruction set support. 'cannonlake' Intel Cannonlake Server CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, PKU, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, AVX512F, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ, AVX512CD, AVX512VBMI, AVX512IFMA, SHA and UMIP instruction set support. 'icelake-client' Intel Icelake Client CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, PKU, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, AVX512F, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ, AVX512CD, AVX512VBMI, AVX512IFMA, SHA, CLWB, UMIP, RDPID, GFNI, AVX512VBMI2, AVX512VPOPCNTDQ, AVX512BITALG, AVX512VNNI, VPCLMULQDQ, VAES instruction set support. 'icelake-server' Intel Icelake Server CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, PKU, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, AVX512F, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ, AVX512CD, AVX512VBMI, AVX512IFMA, SHA, CLWB, UMIP, RDPID, GFNI, AVX512VBMI2, AVX512VPOPCNTDQ, AVX512BITALG, AVX512VNNI, VPCLMULQDQ, VAES, PCONFIG and WBNOINVD instruction set support. 'cascadelake' Intel Cascadelake CPU with 64-bit extensions, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, PKU, AVX, AVX2, AES, PCLMUL, FSGSBASE, RDRND, FMA, BMI, BMI2, F16C, RDSEED, ADCX, PREFETCHW, CLFLUSHOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, AVX512F, CLWB, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ, AVX512CD and AVX512VNNI 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' Processors based on the AMD K8 core with x86-64 instruction set support, including the AMD Opteron, Athlon 64, and Athlon 64 FX processors. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow!, enhanced 3DNow! and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'k8-sse3' 'opteron-sse3' 'athlon64-sse3' Improved versions of AMD K8 cores with SSE3 instruction set support. 'amdfam10' 'barcelona' CPUs based on AMD Family 10h cores with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, 3DNow!, enhanced 3DNow!, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'bdver1' CPUs based on AMD Family 15h cores with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets FMA4, AVX, XOP, LWP, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'bdver2' AMD Family 15h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets BMI, TBM, F16C, FMA, FMA4, AVX, XOP, LWP, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'bdver3' AMD Family 15h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets BMI, TBM, F16C, FMA, FMA4, FSGSBASE, AVX, XOP, LWP, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions. 'bdver4' AMD Family 15h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets BMI, BMI2, TBM, F16C, FMA, FMA4, FSGSBASE, AVX, AVX2, XOP, LWP, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions. 'znver1' AMD Family 17h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets BMI, BMI2, F16C, FMA, FSGSBASE, AVX, AVX2, ADCX, RDSEED, MWAITX, SHA, CLZERO, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM, XSAVEC, XSAVES, CLFLUSHOPT, POPCNT, and 64-bit instruction set extensions. 'znver2' AMD Family 17h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets BMI, BMI2, ,CLWB, F16C, FMA, FSGSBASE, AVX, AVX2, ADCX, RDSEED, MWAITX, SHA, CLZERO, AES, PCL_MUL, CX16, MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, ABM, XSAVEC, XSAVES, CLFLUSHOPT, POPCNT, and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'btver1' CPUs based on AMD Family 14h cores with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4A, CX16, ABM and 64-bit instruction set extensions.) 'btver2' CPUs based on AMD Family 16h cores with x86-64 instruction set support. This includes MOVBE, F16C, BMI, AVX, PCL_MUL, AES, SSE4.2, SSE4.1, CX16, ABM, SSE4A, SSSE3, SSE3, SSE2, SSE, MMX 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 WinChip 2 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 (Nehemiah/C5XL) CPU with MMX and SSE instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'c7' VIA C7 (Esther) CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'samuel-2' VIA Eden Samuel 2 CPU with MMX and 3DNow! instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nehemiah' VIA Eden Nehemiah CPU with MMX and SSE instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'esther' VIA Eden Esther CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'eden-x2' VIA Eden X2 CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'eden-x4' VIA Eden X4 CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX and AVX2 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano' Generic VIA Nano CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano-1000' VIA Nano 1xxx CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano-2000' VIA Nano 2xxx CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano-3000' VIA Nano 3xxx CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 and SSE4.1 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano-x2' VIA Nano Dual Core CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 and SSE4.1 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'nano-x4' VIA Nano Quad Core CPU with x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 and SSE4.1 instruction set support. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.) 'geode' AMD Geode embedded processor with MMX and 3DNow! instruction set support. -mtune=cpu-type Tune to cpu-type everything applicable about the generated code, except for the ABI and the set of available instructions. While picking a specific cpu-type schedules things appropriately for that particular chip, the compiler does not generate any code that cannot run on the default machine type unless you use a -march=cpu-type option. For example, if GCC is configured for i686-pc-linux-gnu then -mtune=pentium4 generates code that is tuned for Pentium 4 but still runs on i686 machines. The choices for cpu-type are the same as for -march. In addition, -mtune supports 2 extra choices for cpu-type: '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 or -march 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, code generation controlled by this option will change to reflect the processors that are most common at the time that version of GCC is 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. 'intel' Produce code optimized for the most current Intel processors, which are Haswell and Silvermont for this version of GCC. If you know the CPU on which your code will run, then you should use the corresponding -mtune or -march option instead of -mtune=intel. But, if you want your application performs better on both Haswell and Silvermont, then you should use this option. As new Intel processors are deployed in the marketplace, the behavior of this option will change. Therefore, if you upgrade to a newer version of GCC, code generation controlled by this option will change to reflect the most current Intel processors at the time that version of GCC is released. There is no -march=intel option because -march indicates the instruction set the compiler can use, and there is no common 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. -mcpu=cpu-type A deprecated synonym for -mtune. -mfpmath=unit Generate floating-point arithmetic for selected unit unit. The choices for unit are: '387' Use the standard 387 floating-point coprocessor present on the majority of chips and emulated otherwise. Code compiled with this option runs almost everywhere. The temporary results are computed in 80-bit precision instead of the 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 non-Darwin x86-32 targets. 'sse' Use scalar floating-point instructions present in the SSE instruction set. This instruction set is supported by Pentium III and newer chips, and in the AMD line by Athlon-4, Athlon XP and Athlon MP chips. The earlier version of the SSE instruction set supports only single-precision arithmetic, thus the double and extended-precision arithmetic are still done using 387. A later version, present only in Pentium 4 and AMD x86-64 chips, supports double-precision arithmetic too. For the x86-32 compiler, you must 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 80 bits. This is the default choice for the x86-64 compiler, Darwin x86-32 targets, and the default choice for x86-32 targets with the SSE2 instruction set when -ffast-math is enabled. 'sse,387' 'sse+387' 'both' Attempt to utilize both instruction sets at once. This effectively doubles 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 unstable performance. -masm=dialect Output assembly instructions using selected dialect. Also affects which dialect is used for basic asm (see Basic Asm) and extended asm (see Extended Asm). Supported choices (in dialect order) are 'att' or 'intel'. The default is 'att'. Darwin does not support 'intel'. -mieee-fp -mno-ieee-fp Control whether or not the compiler uses IEEE floating-point comparisons. These correctly handle the case where the result of a comparison is unordered. -m80387 -mhard-float Generate output containing 80387 instructions for floating point. -mno-80387 -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 cannot 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 overridden when -march indicates that the target CPU always has an FPU and so the instruction does not need emulation. 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 produces 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 are aligned differently than the published application binary interface specifications for the x86-32 and are not 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 x86-32 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) prefer long double to be aligned to an 8- or 16-byte boundary. In arrays or structures conforming to the ABI, this is not possible. So specifying -m128bit-long-double aligns 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 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, this changes the size of structures and arrays containing long double variables, as well as modifying the function calling convention for functions taking long double. Hence they are not binary-compatible with code compiled without that switch. -mlong-double-64 -mlong-double-80 -mlong-double-128 These switches control the size of long double type. A size of 64 bits makes the long double type equivalent to the double type. This is the default for 32-bit Bionic C library. A size of 128 bits makes the long double type equivalent to the __float128 type. This is the default for 64-bit Bionic C library. Warning: if you override the default value for your target ABI, this changes the size of structures and arrays containing long double variables, as well as modifying the function calling convention for functions taking long double. Hence they are not binary-compatible with code compiled without that switch. -malign-data=type Control how GCC aligns variables. Supported values for type are 'compat' uses increased alignment value compatible uses GCC 4.8 and earlier, 'abi' uses alignment value as specified by the psABI, and 'cacheline' uses increased alignment value to match the cache line size. 'compat' is the default. -mlarge-data-threshold=threshold When -mcmodel=medium is specified, data objects larger than threshold are placed in the large data section. This value must be the same across all objects linked into the binary, and defaults to 65535. -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. See Function Attributes. 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 is generated for calls to those functions. In addition, seriously incorrect code results 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. See Function Attributes. 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. See Function Attributes. 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. -mvect8-ret-in-mem Return 8-byte vectors in memory instead of MMX registers. This is the default on Solaris 8 and 9 and VxWorks to match the ABI of the Sun Studio compilers until version 12. Later compiler versions (starting with Studio 12 Update 1) follow the ABI used by other x86 targets, which is the default on Solaris 10 and later. Only use this option if you need to remain compatible with existing code produced by those previous compiler versions or older versions of GCC. -mpc32 -mpc64 -mpc80 Set 80387 floating-point precision to 32, 64 or 80 bits. When -mpc32 is specified, the significands of results of floating-point operations are rounded to 24 bits (single precision); -mpc64 rounds the significands of results of floating-point operations to 53 bits (double precision) and -mpc80 rounds the significands of results of floating-point operations to 64 bits (extended double precision), which is the default. When this option is used, floating-point operations in higher precisions are not available to the programmer without setting the FPU control word explicitly. Setting the rounding of floating-point operations to less than the default 80 bits can speed some programs by 2% or more. Note that some mathematical libraries assume that extended-precision (80-bit) floating-point operations are enabled by default; routines in such libraries could suffer significant loss of accuracy, typically through so-called “catastrophic cancellation”, when this option is used to set the precision to less than extended precision. -mstackrealign Realign the stack at entry. On the x86, the -mstackrealign option generates an alternate prologue and epilogue that realigns the run-time stack if necessary. This supports mixing legacy codes that keep 4-byte stack alignment with modern codes that keep 16-byte stack alignment for SSE compatibility. 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). Warning: When generating code for the x86-64 architecture with SSE extensions disabled, -mpreferred-stack-boundary=3 can be used to keep the stack boundary aligned to 8 byte boundary. Since x86-64 ABI require 16 byte stack alignment, this is ABI incompatible and intended to be used in controlled environment where stack space is important limitation. This option leads to wrong code when functions compiled with 16 byte stack alignment (such as functions from a standard library) are called with misaligned stack. In this case, SSE instructions may lead to misaligned memory access traps. In addition, variable arguments are handled incorrectly for 16 byte aligned objects (including x87 long double and __int128), leading to wrong results. You must build all modules with -mpreferred-stack-boundary=3, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and startup modules. -mincoming-stack-boundary=num Assume the incoming stack is aligned to a 2 raised to num byte boundary. If -mincoming-stack-boundary is not specified, the one specified by -mpreferred-stack-boundary is used. On Pentium and Pentium Pro, 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 most likely misaligns 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 -msse -msse2 -msse3 -mssse3 -msse4 -msse4a -msse4.1 -msse4.2 -mavx -mavx2 -mavx512f -mavx512pf -mavx512er -mavx512cd -mavx512vl -mavx512bw -mavx512dq -mavx512ifma -mavx512vbmi -msha -maes -mpclmul -mclflushopt -mclwb -mfsgsbase -mptwrite -mrdrnd -mf16c -mfma -mpconfig -mwbnoinvd -mfma4 -mprfchw -mrdpid -mprefetchwt1 -mrdseed -msgx -mxop -mlwp -m3dnow -m3dnowa -mpopcnt -mabm -madx -mbmi -mbmi2 -mlzcnt -mfxsr -mxsave -mxsaveopt -mxsavec -mxsaves -mrtm -mhle -mtbm -mmwaitx -mclzero -mpku -mavx512vbmi2 -mgfni -mvaes -mwaitpkg -mvpclmulqdq -mavx512bitalg -mmovdiri -mmovdir64b -mavx512vpopcntdq -mavx5124fmaps -mavx512vnni -mavx5124vnniw -mcldemote These switches enable the use of instructions in the MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4A, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, AVX512F, AVX512PF, AVX512ER, AVX512CD, AVX512VL, AVX512BW, AVX512DQ, AVX512IFMA, AVX512VBMI, SHA, AES, PCLMUL, CLFLUSHOPT, CLWB, FSGSBASE, PTWRITE, RDRND, F16C, FMA, PCONFIG, WBNOINVD, FMA4, PREFETCHW, RDPID, PREFETCHWT1, RDSEED, SGX, XOP, LWP, 3DNow!, enhanced 3DNow!, POPCNT, ABM, ADX, BMI, BMI2, LZCNT, FXSR, XSAVE, XSAVEOPT, XSAVEC, XSAVES, RTM, HLE, TBM, MWAITX, CLZERO, PKU, AVX512VBMI2, GFNI, VAES, WAITPKG, VPCLMULQDQ, AVX512BITALG, MOVDIRI, MOVDIR64B, AVX512VPOPCNTDQ, AVX5124FMAPS, AVX512VNNI, AVX5124VNNIW, or CLDEMOTE extended instruction sets. Each has a corresponding -mno- option to disable use of these instructions. 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 generate SSE/SSE2 instructions automatically from floating-point code (as opposed to 387 instructions), see -mfpmath=sse. GCC depresses SSEx instructions when -mavx is used. Instead, it generates new AVX instructions or AVX equivalence for all SSEx instructions when needed. These options enable GCC to use these extended instructions in generated code, even without -mfpmath=sse. Applications that perform run-time 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. -mdump-tune-features This option instructs GCC to dump the names of the x86 performance tuning features and default settings. The names can be used in -mtune-ctrl=feature-list. -mtune-ctrl=feature-list This option is used to do fine grain control of x86 code generation features. feature-list is a comma separated list of feature names. See also -mdump-tune-features. When specified, the feature is turned on if it is not preceded with '^', otherwise, it is turned off. -mtune-ctrl=feature-list is intended to be used by GCC developers. Using it may lead to code paths not covered by testing and can potentially result in compiler ICEs or runtime errors. -mno-default This option instructs GCC to turn off all tunable features. See also -mtune-ctrl=feature-list and -mdump-tune-features. -mcld This option instructs GCC to emit a cld instruction in the prologue of functions that use string instructions. String instructions depend on the DF flag to select between autoincrement or autodecrement mode. While the ABI specifies the DF flag to be cleared on function entry, some operating systems violate this specification by not clearing the DF flag in their exception dispatchers. The exception handler can be invoked with the DF flag set, which leads to wrong direction mode when string instructions are used. This option can be enabled by default on 32-bit x86 targets by configuring GCC with the --enable-cld configure option. Generation of cld instructions can be suppressed with the -mno-cld compiler option in this case. -mvzeroupper This option instructs GCC to emit a vzeroupper instruction before a transfer of control flow out of the function to minimize the AVX to SSE transition penalty as well as remove unnecessary zeroupper intrinsics. -mprefer-avx128 This option instructs GCC to use 128-bit AVX instructions instead of 256-bit AVX instructions in the auto-vectorizer. -mprefer-vector-width=opt This option instructs GCC to use opt-bit vector width in instructions instead of default on the selected platform. 'none' No extra limitations applied to GCC other than defined by the selected platform. '128' Prefer 128-bit vector width for instructions. '256' Prefer 256-bit vector width for instructions. '512' Prefer 512-bit vector width for instructions. -mcx16 This option enables GCC to generate CMPXCHG16B instructions in 64-bit code to implement compare-and-exchange operations on 16-byte aligned 128-bit objects. This is useful for atomic updates of data structures exceeding one machine word in size. The compiler uses this instruction to implement __sync Builtins. However, for __atomic Builtins operating on 128-bit integers, a library call is always used. -msahf This option enables generation of SAHF instructions in 64-bit code. Early Intel Pentium 4 CPUs with Intel 64 support, prior to the introduction of Pentium 4 G1 step in December 2005, lacked the LAHF and SAHF instructions which are supported by AMD64. These are load and store instructions, respectively, for certain status flags. In 64-bit mode, the SAHF instruction is used to optimize fmod, drem, and remainder built-in functions; see Other Builtins for details. -mmovbe This option enables use of the movbe instruction to implement __builtin_bswap32 and __builtin_bswap64. -mshstk The -mshstk option enables shadow stack built-in functions from x86 Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). -mcrc32 This option enables built-in functions __builtin_ia32_crc32qi, __builtin_ia32_crc32hi, __builtin_ia32_crc32si and __builtin_ia32_crc32di to generate the crc32 machine instruction. -mrecip This option enables use of RCPSS and RSQRTSS instructions (and their vectorized variants RCPPS and RSQRTPS) with an additional Newton-Raphson step to increase precision instead of DIVSS and SQRTSS (and their vectorized variants) for single-precision floating-point arguments. These instructions are generated only when -funsafe-math-optimizations is enabled together with -ffinite-math-only and -fno-trapping-math. Note that while the throughput of the sequence is higher than the throughput of the non-reciprocal instruction, the precision of the sequence can be decreased by up to 2 ulp (i.e. the inverse of 1.0 equals 0.99999994). Note that GCC implements 1.0f/sqrtf(x) in terms of RSQRTSS (or RSQRTPS) already with -ffast-math (or the above option combination), and doesn't need -mrecip. Also note that GCC emits the above sequence with additional Newton-Raphson step for vectorized single-float division and vectorized sqrtf(x) already with -ffast-math (or the above option combination), and doesn't need -mrecip. -mrecip=opt This option controls which reciprocal estimate instructions may be used. opt is a comma-separated list of options, which may be preceded by a '!' to invert the option: 'all' Enable all estimate instructions. 'default' Enable the default instructions, equivalent to -mrecip. 'none' Disable all estimate instructions, equivalent to -mno-recip. 'div' Enable the approximation for scalar division. 'vec-div' Enable the approximation for vectorized division. 'sqrt' Enable the approximation for scalar square root. 'vec-sqrt' Enable the approximation for vectorized square root. So, for example, -mrecip=all,!sqrt enables all of the reciprocal approximations, except for square root. -mveclibabi=type Specifies the ABI type to use for vectorizing intrinsics using an external library. Supported values for type are 'svml' for the Intel short vector math library and 'acml' for the AMD math core library. To use this option, both -ftree-vectorize and -funsafe-math-optimizations have to be enabled, and an SVML or ACML ABI-compatible library must be specified at link time. GCC currently emits calls to vmldExp2, vmldLn2, vmldLog102, vmldPow2, vmldTanh2, vmldTan2, vmldAtan2, vmldAtanh2, vmldCbrt2, vmldSinh2, vmldSin2, vmldAsinh2, vmldAsin2, vmldCosh2, vmldCos2, vmldAcosh2, vmldAcos2, vmlsExp4, vmlsLn4, vmlsLog104, vmlsPow4, vmlsTanh4, vmlsTan4, vmlsAtan4, vmlsAtanh4, vmlsCbrt4, vmlsSinh4, vmlsSin4, vmlsAsinh4, vmlsAsin4, vmlsCosh4, vmlsCos4, vmlsAcosh4 and vmlsAcos4 for corresponding function type when -mveclibabi=svml is used, and __vrd2_sin, __vrd2_cos, __vrd2_exp, __vrd2_log, __vrd2_log2, __vrd2_log10, __vrs4_sinf, __vrs4_cosf, __vrs4_expf, __vrs4_logf, __vrs4_log2f, __vrs4_log10f and __vrs4_powf for the corresponding function type when -mveclibabi=acml is used. -mabi=name Generate code for the specified calling convention. Permissible values are 'sysv' for the ABI used on GNU/Linux and other systems, and 'ms' for the Microsoft ABI. The default is to use the Microsoft ABI when targeting Microsoft Windows and the SysV ABI on all other systems. You can control this behavior for specific functions by using the function attributes ms_abi and sysv_abi. See Function Attributes. -mforce-indirect-call Force all calls to functions to be indirect. This is useful when using Intel Processor Trace where it generates more precise timing information for function calls. -mmanual-endbr Insert ENDBR instruction at function entry only via the cf_check function attribute. This is useful when used with the option -fcf-protection=branch to control ENDBR insertion at the function entry. -mcall-ms2sysv-xlogues Due to differences in 64-bit ABIs, any Microsoft ABI function that calls a System V ABI function must consider RSI, RDI and XMM6-15 as clobbered. By default, the code for saving and restoring these registers is emitted inline, resulting in fairly lengthy prologues and epilogues. Using -mcall-ms2sysv-xlogues emits prologues and epilogues that use stubs in the static portion of libgcc to perform these saves and restores, thus reducing function size at the cost of a few extra instructions. -mtls-dialect=type Generate code to access thread-local storage using the 'gnu' or 'gnu2' conventions. 'gnu' is the conservative default; 'gnu2' is more efficient, but it may add compile- and run-time requirements that cannot be satisfied on all systems. -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 is computed in the function prologue. This is faster on most modern CPUs because of reduced dependencies, improved scheduling and reduced stack usage when the 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 MinGW. Programs that rely 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. -mms-bitfields -mno-ms-bitfields Enable/disable bit-field layout compatible with the native Microsoft Windows compiler. If packed is used on a structure, or if bit-fields are used, it may be that the Microsoft ABI lays out the structure differently than the way GCC normally does. Particularly when moving packed data between functions compiled with GCC and the native Microsoft compiler (either via function call or as data in a file), it may be necessary to access either format. This option is enabled by default for Microsoft Windows targets. This behavior can also be controlled locally by use of variable or type attributes. For more information, see x86 Variable Attributes and x86 Type Attributes. The Microsoft structure layout algorithm is fairly simple with the exception of the bit-field packing. The padding and alignment of members of structures and whether a bit-field can straddle a storage-unit boundary are determine by these rules: 1. Structure members are stored sequentially in the order in which they are declared: the first member has the lowest memory address and the last member the highest. 2. Every data object has an alignment requirement. The alignment requirement for all data except structures, unions, and arrays is either the size of the object or the current packing size (specified with either the aligned attribute or the pack pragma), whichever is less. For structures, unions, and arrays, the alignment requirement is the largest alignment requirement of its members. Every object is allocated an offset so that: offset % alignment_requirement == 0 3. Adjacent bit-fields are packed into the same 1-, 2-, or 4-byte allocation unit if the integral types are the same size and if the next bit-field fits into the current allocation unit without crossing the boundary imposed by the common alignment requirements of the bit-fields. MSVC interprets zero-length bit-fields in the following ways: 1. If a zero-length bit-field is inserted between two bit-fields that are normally coalesced, the bit-fields are not coalesced. For example: struct { unsigned long bf_1 : 12; unsigned long : 0; unsigned long bf_2 : 12; } t1; The size of t1 is 8 bytes with the zero-length bit-field. If the zero-length bit-field were removed, t1's size would be 4 bytes. 2. If a zero-length bit-field is inserted after a bit-field, foo, and the alignment of the zero-length bit-field is greater than the member that follows it, bar, bar is aligned as the type of the zero-length bit-field. For example: struct { char foo : 4; short : 0; char bar; } t2; struct { char foo : 4; short : 0; double bar; } t3; For t2, bar is placed at offset 2, rather than offset 1. Accordingly, the size of t2 is 4. For t3, the zero-length bit-field does not affect the alignment of bar or, as a result, the size of the structure. Taking this into account, it is important to note the following: 1. If a zero-length bit-field follows a normal bit-field, the type of the zero-length bit-field may affect the alignment of the structure as whole. For example, t2 has a size of 4 bytes, since the zero-length bit-field follows a normal bit-field, and is of type short. 2. Even if a zero-length bit-field is not followed by a normal bit-field, it may still affect the alignment of the structure: struct { char foo : 6; long : 0; } t4; Here, t4 takes up 4 bytes. 3. Zero-length bit-fields following non-bit-field members are ignored: struct { char foo; long : 0; char bar; } t5; Here, t5 takes up 2 bytes. -mno-align-stringops Do not align the 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 the destination is known to be aligned to least a 4-byte boundary. This enables more inlining and increases code size, but may improve performance of code that depends on fast memcpy, strlen, and memset for short lengths. -minline-stringops-dynamically For string operations of unknown size, use run-time checks with inline code for small blocks and a library call for large blocks. -mstringop-strategy=alg Override the internal decision heuristic for the particular algorithm to use for inlining string operations. The allowed values for alg are: 'rep_byte' 'rep_4byte' 'rep_8byte' Expand using i386 rep prefix of the specified size. 'byte_loop' 'loop' 'unrolled_loop' Expand into an inline loop. 'libcall' Always use a library call. -mmemcpy-strategy=strategy Override the internal decision heuristic to decide if __builtin_memcpy should be inlined and what inline algorithm to use when the expected size of the copy operation is known. strategy is a comma-separated list of alg:max_size:dest_align triplets. alg is specified in -mstringop-strategy, max_size specifies the max byte size with which inline algorithm alg is allowed. For the last triplet, the max_size must be -1. The max_size of the triplets in the list must be specified in increasing order. The minimal byte size for alg is 0 for the first triplet and max_size + 1 of the preceding range. -mmemset-strategy=strategy The option is similar to -mmemcpy-strategy= except that it is to control __builtin_memset expansion. -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-leaf-frame-pointer removes the frame pointer for leaf 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 valid depends on the operating system, and whether it maps the segment to cover the entire TLS area. For systems that use the GNU C Library, the default is on. -msse2avx -mno-sse2avx Specify that the assembler should encode SSE instructions with VEX prefix. The option -mavx turns this on by default. -mfentry -mno-fentry If profiling is active (-pg), put the profiling counter call before the prologue. Note: On x86 architectures the attribute ms_hook_prologue isn't possible at the moment for -mfentry and -pg. -mrecord-mcount -mno-record-mcount If profiling is active (-pg), generate a __mcount_loc section that contains pointers to each profiling call. This is useful for automatically patching and out calls. -mnop-mcount -mno-nop-mcount If profiling is active (-pg), generate the calls to the profiling functions as NOPs. This is useful when they should be patched in later dynamically. This is likely only useful together with -mrecord-mcount. -minstrument-return=type Instrument function exit in -pg -mfentry instrumented functions with call to specified function. This only instruments true returns ending with ret, but not sibling calls ending with jump. Valid types are none to not instrument, call to generate a call to __return__, or nop5 to generate a 5 byte nop. -mrecord-return -mno-record-return Generate a __return_loc section pointing to all return instrumentation code. -mfentry-name=name Set name of __fentry__ symbol called at function entry for -pg -mfentry functions. -mfentry-section=name Set name of section to record -mrecord-mcount calls (default __mcount_loc). -mskip-rax-setup -mno-skip-rax-setup When generating code for the x86-64 architecture with SSE extensions disabled, -mskip-rax-setup can be used to skip setting up RAX register when there are no variable arguments passed in vector registers. Warning: Since RAX register is used to avoid unnecessarily saving vector registers on stack when passing variable arguments, the impacts of this option are callees may waste some stack space, misbehave or jump to a random location. GCC 4.4 or newer don't have those issues, regardless the RAX register value. -m8bit-idiv -mno-8bit-idiv On some processors, like Intel Atom, 8-bit unsigned integer divide is much faster than 32-bit/64-bit integer divide. This option generates a run-time check. If both dividend and divisor are within range of 0 to 255, 8-bit unsigned integer divide is used instead of 32-bit/64-bit integer divide. -mavx256-split-unaligned-load -mavx256-split-unaligned-store Split 32-byte AVX unaligned load and store. -mstack-protector-guard=guard -mstack-protector-guard-reg=reg -mstack-protector-guard-offset=offset Generate stack protection code using canary at guard. Supported locations are 'global' for global canary or 'tls' for per-thread canary in the TLS block (the default). This option has effect only when -fstack-protector or -fstack-protector-all is specified. With the latter choice the options -mstack-protector-guard-reg=reg and -mstack-protector-guard-offset=offset furthermore specify which segment register (%fs or %gs) to use as base register for reading the canary, and from what offset from that base register. The default for those is as specified in the relevant ABI. -mgeneral-regs-only Generate code that uses only the general-purpose registers. This prevents the compiler from using floating-point, vector, mask and bound registers. -mindirect-branch=choice Convert indirect call and jump with choice. The default is 'keep', which keeps indirect call and jump unmodified. 'thunk' converts indirect call and jump to call and return thunk. 'thunk-inline' converts indirect call and jump to inlined call and return thunk. 'thunk-extern' converts indirect call and jump to external call and return thunk provided in a separate object file. You can control this behavior for a specific function by using the function attribute indirect_branch. See Function Attributes. Note that -mcmodel=large is incompatible with -mindirect-branch=thunk and -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern since the thunk function may not be reachable in the large code model. Note that -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern is incompatible with -fcf-protection=branch since the external thunk cannot be modified to disable control-flow check. -mfunction-return=choice Convert function return with choice. The default is 'keep', which keeps function return unmodified. 'thunk' converts function return to call and return thunk. 'thunk-inline' converts function return to inlined call and return thunk. 'thunk-extern' converts function return to external call and return thunk provided in a separate object file. You can control this behavior for a specific function by using the function attribute function_return. See Function Attributes. Note that -mcmodel=large is incompatible with -mfunction-return=thunk and -mfunction-return=thunk-extern since the thunk function may not be reachable in the large code model. -mindirect-branch-register Force indirect call and jump via register. These '-m' switches are supported in addition to the above on x86-64 processors in 64-bit environments. -m32 -m64 -mx32 -m16 -miamcu Generate code for a 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit environment. The -m32 option sets int, long, and pointer types to 32 bits, and generates code that runs on any i386 system. The -m64 option sets int to 32 bits and long and pointer types to 64 bits, and generates code for the x86-64 architecture. For Darwin only the -m64 option also turns off the -fno-pic and -mdynamic-no-pic options. The -mx32 option sets int, long, and pointer types to 32 bits, and generates code for the x86-64 architecture. The -m16 option is the same as -m32, except for that it outputs the .code16gcc assembly directive at the beginning of the assembly output so that the binary can run in 16-bit mode. The -miamcu option generates code which conforms to Intel MCU psABI. It requires the -m32 option to be turned on. -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 is not 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. Small symbols are also placed there. Symbols with sizes larger than -mlarge-data-threshold are put into large data or BSS sections and can be located above 2GB. Programs can be statically or dynamically linked. -mcmodel=large Generate code for the large model. This model makes no assumptions about addresses and sizes of sections. -maddress-mode=long Generate code for long address mode. This is only supported for 64-bit and x32 environments. It is the default address mode for 64-bit environments. -maddress-mode=short Generate code for short address mode. This is only supported for 32-bit and x32 environments. It is the default address mode for 32-bit and x32 environments. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: x86 Windows Options, Previous: VxWorks Options, Up: Submodel Options Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Submodel Options Link: next: Xstormy16 Options Link: prev: x86 Options Next: Xstormy16 Options, Previous: x86 Options, Up: Submodel Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.18.59 x86 Windows Options These additional options are available for Microsoft Windows targets: -mconsole This option specifies that a console application is to be generated, by instructing the linker to set the PE header subsystem type required for console applications. This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets and is enabled by default on those targets. -mdll This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets. It specifies that a DLL—a dynamic link library—is to be generated, enabling the selection of the required runtime startup object and entry point. -mnop-fun-dllimport This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets. It specifies that the dllimport attribute should be ignored. -mthread This option is available for MinGW targets. It specifies that MinGW-specific thread support is to be used. -municode This option is available for MinGW-w64 targets. It causes the UNICODE preprocessor macro to be predefined, and chooses Unicode-capable runtime startup code. -mwin32 This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets. It specifies that the typical Microsoft Windows predefined macros are to be set in the pre-processor, but does not influence the choice of runtime library/startup code. -mwindows This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets. It specifies that a GUI application is to be generated by instructing the linker to set the PE header subsystem type appropriately. -fno-set-stack-executable This option is available for MinGW targets. It specifies that the executable flag for the stack used by nested functions isn't set. This is necessary for binaries running in kernel mode of Microsoft Windows, as there the User32 API, which is used to set executable privileges, isn't available. -fwritable-relocated-rdata This option is available for MinGW and Cygwin targets. It specifies that relocated-data in read-only section is put into the .data section. This is a necessary for older runtimes not supporting modification of .rdata sections for pseudo-relocation. -mpe-aligned-commons This option is available for Cygwin and MinGW targets. It specifies that the GNU extension to the PE file format that permits the correct alignment of COMMON variables should be used when generating code. It is enabled by default if GCC detects that the target assembler found during configuration supports the feature. See also under x86 Options for standard options. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Xstormy16 Options, Previous: x86 Options, Up: Submodel Options Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Invoking GCC Link: next: Environment Variables Link: prev: zSeries Options Next: Environment Variables, Previous: Submodel Options, Up: Invoking GCC ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3.19 Specifying Subprocesses and the Switches to Pass to Them gcc is a driver program. It performs its job by invoking a sequence of other programs to do the work of compiling, assembling and linking. GCC interprets its command-line parameters and uses these to deduce which programs it should invoke, and which command-line options it ought to place on their command lines. This behavior is controlled by spec strings. In most cases there is one spec string for each program that GCC can invoke, but a few programs have multiple spec strings to control their behavior. The spec strings built into GCC can be overridden by using the -specs= command-line switch to specify a spec file. Spec files are plain-text files that are used to construct spec strings. They consist of a sequence of directives separated by blank lines. The type of directive is determined by the first non-whitespace character on the line, which can be one of the following: %command Issues a command to the spec file processor. The commands that can appear here are: %include Search for file and insert its text at the current point in the specs file. %include_noerr Just like '%include', but do not generate an error message if the include file cannot be found. %rename old_name new_name Rename the spec string old_name to new_name. *[spec_name]: This tells the compiler to create, override or delete the named spec string. All lines after this directive up to the next directive or blank line are considered to be the text for the spec string. If this results in an empty string then the spec is deleted. (Or, if the spec did not exist, then nothing happens.) Otherwise, if the spec does not currently exist a new spec is created. If the spec does exist then its contents are overridden by the text of this directive, unless the first character of that text is the '+' character, in which case the text is appended to the spec. [suffix]: Creates a new '[suffix] spec' pair. All lines after this directive and up to the next directive or blank line are considered to make up the spec string for the indicated suffix. When the compiler encounters an input file with the named suffix, it processes the spec string in order to work out how to compile that file. For example: .ZZ: z-compile -input %i This says that any input file whose name ends in '.ZZ' should be passed to the program 'z-compile', which should be invoked with the command-line switch -input and with the result of performing the '%i' substitution. (See below.) As an alternative to providing a spec string, the text following a suffix directive can be one of the following: @language This says that the suffix is an alias for a known language. This is similar to using the -x command-line switch to GCC to specify a language explicitly. For example: .ZZ: @c++ Says that .ZZ files are, in fact, C++ source files. #name This causes an error messages saying: name compiler not installed on this system. GCC already has an extensive list of suffixes built into it. This directive adds an entry to the end of the list of suffixes, but since the list is searched from the end backwards, it is effectively possible to override earlier entries using this technique. GCC has the following spec strings built into it. Spec files can override these strings or create their own. Note that individual targets can also add their own spec strings to this list. asm Options to pass to the assembler asm_final Options to pass to the assembler post-processor cpp Options to pass to the C preprocessor cc1 Options to pass to the C compiler cc1plus Options to pass to the C++ compiler endfile Object files to include at the end of the link link Options to pass to the linker lib Libraries to include on the command line to the linker libgcc Decides which GCC support library to pass to the linker linker Sets the name of the linker predefines Defines to be passed to the C preprocessor signed_char Defines to pass to CPP to say whether char is signed by default startfile Object files to include at the start of the link Here is a small example of a spec file: %rename lib old_lib *lib: --start-group -lgcc -lc -leval1 --end-group %(old_lib) This example renames the spec called 'lib' to 'old_lib' and then overrides the previous definition of 'lib' with a new one. The new definition adds in some extra command-line options before including the text of the old definition. Spec strings are a list of command-line options to be passed to their corresponding program. In addition, the spec strings can contain '%'-prefixed sequences to substitute variable text or to conditionally insert text into the command line. Using these constructs it is possible to generate quite complex command lines. Here is a table of all defined '%'-sequences for spec strings. Note that spaces are not generated automatically around the results of expanding these sequences. Therefore you can concatenate them together or combine them with constant text in a single argument. %% Substitute one '%' into the program name or argument. %i Substitute the name of the input file being processed. %b Substitute the basename of the input file being processed. This is the substring up to (and not including) the last period and not including the directory. %B This is the same as '%b', but include the file suffix (text after the last period). %d Marks the argument containing or following the '%d' as a temporary file name, so that that file is deleted if GCC exits successfully. Unlike '%g', this contributes no text to the argument. %gsuffix Substitute a file name that has suffix suffix and is chosen once per compilation, and mark the argument in the same way as '%d'. To reduce exposure to denial-of-service attacks, the file name is now chosen in a way that is hard to predict even when previously chosen file names are known. For example, '%g.s … %g.o … %g.s' might turn into 'ccUVUUAU.s ccXYAXZ12.o ccUVUUAU.s'. suffix matches the regexp '[.A-Za-z]*' or the special string '%O', which is treated exactly as if '%O' had been preprocessed. Previously, '%g' was simply substituted with a file name chosen once per compilation, without regard to any appended suffix (which was therefore treated just like ordinary text), making such attacks more likely to succeed. %usuffix Like '%g', but generates a new temporary file name each time it appears instead of once per compilation. %Usuffix Substitutes the last file name generated with '%usuffix', generating a new one if there is no such last file name. In the absence of any '%usuffix', this is just like '%gsuffix', except they don't share the same suffix space, so '%g.s … %U.s … %g.s … %U.s' involves the generation of two distinct file names, one for each '%g.s' and another for each '%U.s'. Previously, '%U' was simply substituted with a file name chosen for the previous '%u', without regard to any appended suffix. %jsuffix Substitutes the name of the HOST_BIT_BUCKET, if any, and if it is writable, and if -save-temps is not used; otherwise, substitute the name of a temporary file, just like '%u'. This temporary file is not meant for communication between processes, but rather as a junk disposal mechanism. %|suffix %msuffix Like '%g', except if -pipe is in effect. In that case '%|' substitutes a single dash and '%m' substitutes nothing at all. These are the two most common ways to instruct a program that it should read from standard input or write to standard output. If you need something more elaborate you can use an '%{pipe:X}' construct: see for example f/lang-specs.h. %.SUFFIX Substitutes .SUFFIX for the suffixes of a matched switch's args when it is subsequently output with '%*'. SUFFIX is terminated by the next space or %. %w Marks the argument containing or following the '%w' as the designated output file of this compilation. This puts the argument into the sequence of arguments that '%o' substitutes. %o Substitutes the names of all the output files, with spaces automatically placed around them. You should write spaces around the '%o' as well or the results are undefined. '%o' is for use in the specs for running the linker. Input files whose names have no recognized suffix are not compiled at all, but they are included among the output files, so they are linked. %O Substitutes the suffix for object files. Note that this is handled specially when it immediately follows '%g, %u, or %U', because of the need for those to form complete file names. The handling is such that '%O' is treated exactly as if it had already been substituted, except that '%g, %u, and %U' do not currently support additional suffix characters following '%O' as they do following, for example, '.o'. %p Substitutes the standard macro predefinitions for the current target machine. Use this when running cpp. %P Like '%p', but puts '__' before and after the name of each predefined macro, except for macros that start with '__' or with '_L', where L is an uppercase letter. This is for ISO C. %I Substitute any of -iprefix (made from GCC_EXEC_PREFIX), -isysroot (made from TARGET_SYSTEM_ROOT), -isystem (made from COMPILER_PATH and -B options) and -imultilib as necessary. %s Current argument is the name of a library or startup file of some sort. Search for that file in a standard list of directories and substitute the full name found. The current working directory is included in the list of directories scanned. %T Current argument is the name of a linker script. Search for that file in the current list of directories to scan for libraries. If the file is located insert a --script option into the command line followed by the full path name found. If the file is not found then generate an error message. Note: the current working directory is not searched. %estr Print str as an error message. str is terminated by a newline. Use this when inconsistent options are detected. %(name) Substitute the contents of spec string name at this point. %x{option} Accumulate an option for '%X'. %X Output the accumulated linker options specified by -Wl or a '%x' spec string. %Y Output the accumulated assembler options specified by -Wa. %Z Output the accumulated preprocessor options specified by -Wp. %a Process the asm spec. This is used to compute the switches to be passed to the assembler. %A Process the asm_final spec. This is a spec string for passing switches to an assembler post-processor, if such a program is needed. %l Process the link spec. This is the spec for computing the command line passed to the linker. Typically it makes use of the '%L %G %S %D and %E' sequences. %D Dump out a -L option for each directory that GCC believes might contain startup files. If the target supports multilibs then the current multilib directory is prepended to each of these paths. %L Process the lib spec. This is a spec string for deciding which libraries are included on the command line to the linker. %G Process the libgcc spec. This is a spec string for deciding which GCC support library is included on the command line to the linker. %S Process the startfile spec. This is a spec for deciding which object files are the first ones passed to the linker. Typically this might be a file named crt0.o. %E Process the endfile spec. This is a spec string that specifies the last object files that are passed to the linker. %C Process the cpp spec. This is used to construct the arguments to be passed to the C preprocessor. %1 Process the cc1 spec. This is used to construct the options to be passed to the actual C compiler (cc1). %2 Process the cc1plus spec. This is used to construct the options to be passed to the actual C++ compiler (cc1plus). %* Substitute the variable part of a matched option. See below. Note that each comma in the substituted string is replaced by a single space. %>' acts on negative numbers by sign extension. As an extension to the C language, GCC does not use the latitude given in C99 and C11 only to treat certain aspects of signed '<<' as undefined. However, -fsanitize=shift (and -fsanitize=undefined) will diagnose such cases. They are also diagnosed where constant expressions are required. * The sign of the remainder on integer division (C90 6.3.5). GCC always follows the C99 and C11 requirement that the result of division is truncated towards zero. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Floating point implementation, Previous: Characters implementation, Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Arrays and pointers implementation Link: prev: Integers implementation Next: Arrays and pointers implementation, Previous: Integers ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.6 Floating Point * The accuracy of the floating-point operations and of the library functions in and that return floating-point results (C90, C99 and C11 5.2.4.2.2). The accuracy is unknown. * The rounding behaviors characterized by non-standard values of FLT_ROUNDS (C90, C99 and C11 5.2.4.2.2). GCC does not use such values. * The evaluation methods characterized by non-standard negative values of FLT_EVAL_METHOD (C99 and C11 5.2.4.2.2). GCC does not use such values. * The direction of rounding when an integer is converted to a floating-point number that cannot exactly represent the original value (C90 6.2.1.3, C99 and C11 6.3.1.4). C99 Annex F is followed. * The direction of rounding when a floating-point number is converted to a narrower floating-point number (C90 6.2.1.4, C99 and C11 6.3.1.5). C99 Annex F is followed. * How the nearest representable value or the larger or smaller representable value immediately adjacent to the nearest representable value is chosen for certain floating constants (C90 6.1.3.1, C99 and C11 6.4.4.2). C99 Annex F is followed. * Whether and how floating expressions are contracted when not disallowed by the FP_CONTRACT pragma (C99 and C11 6.5). Expressions are currently only contracted if -ffp-contract=fast, -funsafe-math-optimizations or -ffast-math are used. This is subject to change. * The default state for the FENV_ACCESS pragma (C99 and C11 7.6.1). This pragma is not implemented, but the default is to “off” unless -frounding-math is used in which case it is “on”. * Additional floating-point exceptions, rounding modes, environments, and classifications, and their macro names (C99 and C11 7.6, C99 and C11 7.12). This is dependent on the implementation of the C library, and is not defined by GCC itself. * The default state for the FP_CONTRACT pragma (C99 and C11 7.12.2). This pragma is not implemented. Expressions are currently only contracted if -ffp-contract=fast, -funsafe-math-optimizations or -ffast-math are used. This is subject to change. * Whether the “inexact” floating-point exception can be raised when the rounded result actually does equal the mathematical result in an IEC 60559 conformant implementation (C99 F.9). This is dependent on the implementation of the C library, and is not defined by GCC itself. * Whether the “underflow” (and “inexact”) floating-point exception can be raised when a result is tiny but not inexact in an IEC 60559 conformant implementation (C99 F.9). This is dependent on the implementation of the C library, and is not defined by GCC itself. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Arrays and pointers implementation, Previous: Integers Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Hints implementation Link: prev: Floating point implementation Next: Hints implementation, Previous: Floating point implementation, Up: C ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.7 Arrays and Pointers * The result of converting a pointer to an integer or vice versa (C90 6.3.4, C99 and C11 6.3.2.3). A cast from pointer to integer discards most-significant bits if the pointer representation is larger than the integer type, sign-extends^2 if the pointer representation is smaller than the integer type, otherwise the bits are unchanged. A cast from integer to pointer discards most-significant bits if the pointer representation is smaller than the integer type, extends according to the signedness of the integer type if the pointer representation is larger than the integer type, otherwise the bits are unchanged. When casting from pointer to integer and back again, the resulting pointer must reference the same object as the original pointer, otherwise the behavior is undefined. That is, one may not use integer arithmetic to avoid the undefined behavior of pointer arithmetic as proscribed in C99 and C11 6.5.6/8. * The size of the result of subtracting two pointers to elements of the same array (C90 6.3.6, C99 and C11 6.5.6). The value is as specified in the standard and the type is determined by the ABI. Footnotes (2) Future versions of GCC may zero-extend, or use a target-defined ptr_extend pattern. Do not rely on sign extension. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Structures unions enumerations and bit-fields implementation Link: prev: Arrays and pointers implementation Next: Structures unions enumerations and bit-fields implementation, Previous: Arrays and pointers implementation, Up: C Implementation ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.8 Hints * The extent to which suggestions made by using the register storage-class specifier are effective (C90 6.5.1, C99 and C11 6.7.1). The register specifier affects code generation only in these ways: * When used as part of the register variable extension, see Explicit Register Variables. * When -O0 is in use, the compiler allocates distinct stack memory for all variables that do not have the register storage-class specifier; if register is specified, the variable may have a shorter lifespan than the code would indicate and may never be placed in memory. * On some rare x86 targets, setjmp doesn't save the registers in all circumstances. In those cases, GCC doesn't allocate any variables in registers unless they are marked register. * The extent to which suggestions made by using the inline function specifier are effective (C99 and C11 6.7.4). GCC will not inline any functions if the -fno-inline option is used or if -O0 is used. Otherwise, GCC may still be unable to inline a function for many reasons; the -Winline option may be used to determine if a function has not been inlined and why not. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Qualifiers implementation Link: prev: Hints implementation Next: Qualifiers implementation, Previous: Hints implementation, Up: C ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.9 Structures, Unions, Enumerations, and Bit-Fields * A member of a union object is accessed using a member of a different type (C90 6.3.2.3). The relevant bytes of the representation of the object are treated as an object of the type used for the access. See Type-punning. This may be a trap representation. * Whether a “plain” int bit-field is treated as a signed int bit-field or as an unsigned int bit-field (C90 6.5.2, C90 6.5.2.1, C99 and C11 6.7.2, C99 and C11 6.7.2.1). By default it is treated as signed int but this may be changed by the -funsigned-bitfields option. * Allowable bit-field types other than _Bool, signed int, and unsigned int (C99 and C11 6.7.2.1). Other integer types, such as long int, and enumerated types are permitted even in strictly conforming mode. * Whether atomic types are permitted for bit-fields (C11 6.7.2.1). Atomic types are not permitted for bit-fields. * Whether a bit-field can straddle a storage-unit boundary (C90 6.5.2.1, C99 and C11 6.7.2.1). Determined by ABI. * The order of allocation of bit-fields within a unit (C90 6.5.2.1, C99 and C11 6.7.2.1). Determined by ABI. * The alignment of non-bit-field members of structures (C90 6.5.2.1, C99 and C11 6.7.2.1). Determined by ABI. * The integer type compatible with each enumerated type (C90 6.5.2.2, C99 and C11 6.7.2.2). Normally, the type is unsigned int if there are no negative values in the enumeration, otherwise int. If -fshort-enums is specified, then if there are negative values it is the first of signed char, short and int that can represent all the values, otherwise it is the first of unsigned char, unsigned short and unsigned int that can represent all the values. On some targets, -fshort-enums is the default; this is determined by the ABI. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Qualifiers implementation, Previous: Hints implementation, Up: C Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Declarators implementation Link: prev: Structures unions enumerations and bit-fields implementation Next: Declarators implementation, Previous: Structures unions enumerations ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.10 Qualifiers * What constitutes an access to an object that has volatile-qualified type (C90 6.5.3, C99 and C11 6.7.3). Such an object is normally accessed by pointers and used for accessing hardware. In most expressions, it is intuitively obvious what is a read and what is a write. For example volatile int *dst = somevalue; volatile int *src = someothervalue; *dst = *src; will cause a read of the volatile object pointed to by src and store the value into the volatile object pointed to by dst. There is no guarantee that these reads and writes are atomic, especially for objects larger than int. However, if the volatile storage is not being modified, and the value of the volatile storage is not used, then the situation is less obvious. For example volatile int *src = somevalue; *src; According to the C standard, such an expression is an rvalue whose type is the unqualified version of its original type, i.e. int. Whether GCC interprets this as a read of the volatile object being pointed to or only as a request to evaluate the expression for its side effects depends on this type. If it is a scalar type, or on most targets an aggregate type whose only member object is of a scalar type, or a union type whose member objects are of scalar types, the expression is interpreted by GCC as a read of the volatile object; in the other cases, the expression is only evaluated for its side effects. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Declarators implementation, Previous: Structures unions enumerations Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Statements implementation Link: prev: Qualifiers implementation Next: Statements implementation, Previous: Qualifiers implementation, Up: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.11 Declarators * The maximum number of declarators that may modify an arithmetic, structure or union type (C90 6.5.4). GCC is only limited by available memory. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Preprocessing directives implementation Link: prev: Declarators implementation Next: Preprocessing directives implementation, Previous: Declarators ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.12 Statements * The maximum number of case values in a switch statement (C90 6.6.4.2). GCC is only limited by available memory. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Library functions implementation Link: prev: Statements implementation Next: Library functions implementation, Previous: Statements ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.13 Preprocessing Directives See Implementation-defined behavior in The C Preprocessor, for details of these aspects of implementation-defined behavior. * The locations within #pragma directives where header name preprocessing tokens are recognized (C11 6.4, C11 6.4.7). * How sequences in both forms of header names are mapped to headers or external source file names (C90 6.1.7, C99 and C11 6.4.7). * Whether the value of a character constant in a constant expression that controls conditional inclusion matches the value of the same character constant in the execution character set (C90 6.8.1, C99 and C11 6.10.1). * Whether the value of a single-character character constant in a constant expression that controls conditional inclusion may have a negative value (C90 6.8.1, C99 and C11 6.10.1). * The places that are searched for an included '<>' delimited header, and how the places are specified or the header is identified (C90 6.8.2, C99 and C11 6.10.2). * How the named source file is searched for in an included '""' delimited header (C90 6.8.2, C99 and C11 6.10.2). * The method by which preprocessing tokens (possibly resulting from macro expansion) in a #include directive are combined into a header name (C90 6.8.2, C99 and C11 6.10.2). * The nesting limit for #include processing (C90 6.8.2, C99 and C11 6.10.2). * Whether the '#' operator inserts a '\' character before the '\' character that begins a universal character name in a character constant or string literal (C99 and C11 6.10.3.2). * The behavior on each recognized non-STDC #pragma directive (C90 6.8.6, C99 and C11 6.10.6). See Pragmas in The C Preprocessor, for details of pragmas accepted by GCC on all targets. See Pragmas Accepted by GCC, for details of target-specific pragmas. * The definitions for __DATE__ and __TIME__ when respectively, the date and time of translation are not available (C90 6.8.8, C99 6.10.8, C11 6.10.8.1). ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Library functions implementation, Previous: Statements Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Architecture implementation Link: prev: Preprocessing directives implementation Next: Architecture implementation, Previous: Preprocessing directives ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.14 Library Functions The behavior of most of these points are dependent on the implementation of the C library, and are not defined by GCC itself. * The null pointer constant to which the macro NULL expands (C90 7.1.6, C99 7.17, C11 7.19). In , NULL expands to ((void *)0). GCC does not provide the other headers which define NULL and some library implementations may use other definitions in those headers. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: Locale-specific behavior implementation Link: prev: Library functions implementation Next: Locale-specific behavior implementation, Previous: Library functions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.15 Architecture * The values or expressions assigned to the macros specified in the headers , , and (C90, C99 and C11 5.2.4.2, C99 7.18.2, C99 7.18.3, C11 7.20.2, C11 7.20.3). Determined by ABI. * The result of attempting to indirectly access an object with automatic or thread storage duration from a thread other than the one with which it is associated (C11 6.2.4). Such accesses are supported, subject to the same requirements for synchronization for concurrent accesses as for concurrent accesses to any object. * The number, order, and encoding of bytes in any object (when not explicitly specified in this International Standard) (C99 and C11 6.2.6.1). Determined by ABI. * Whether any extended alignments are supported and the contexts in which they are supported (C11 6.2.8). Extended alignments up to 2^{28} (bytes) are supported for objects of automatic storage duration. Alignments supported for objects of static and thread storage duration are determined by the ABI. * Valid alignment values other than those returned by an _Alignof expression for fundamental types, if any (C11 6.2.8). Valid alignments are powers of 2 up to and including 2^{28}. * The value of the result of the sizeof and _Alignof operators (C90 6.3.3.4, C99 and C11 6.5.3.4). Determined by ABI. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Implementation Link: next: C++ Implementation Link: prev: Architecture implementation Previous: Architecture implementation, Up: C Implementation ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 4.16 Locale-Specific Behavior The behavior of these points are dependent on the implementation of the C library, and are not defined by GCC itself. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Top Link: next: Conditionally-supported behavior Link: prev: Locale-specific behavior implementation Next: C Extensions, Previous: C Implementation, Up: Top ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 C++ Implementation-Defined Behavior A conforming implementation of ISO C++ is required to document its choice of behavior in each of the areas that are designated “implementation defined”. The following lists all such areas, along with the section numbers from the ISO/IEC 14882:1998 and ISO/IEC 14882:2003 standards. Some areas are only implementation-defined in one version of the standard. Some choices depend on the externally determined ABI for the platform (including standard character encodings) which GCC follows; these are listed as “determined by ABI” below. See Binary Compatibility, and http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html. Some choices are documented in the preprocessor manual. See Implementation-defined behavior in The C Preprocessor. Some choices are documented in the corresponding document for the C language. See C Implementation. Some choices are made by the library and operating system (or other environment when compiling for a freestanding environment); refer to their documentation for details. • Conditionally-supported behavior: • Exception handling: Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C++ Implementation Link: next: Exception handling Link: prev: C++ Implementation ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5.1 Conditionally-Supported Behavior Each implementation shall include documentation that identifies all conditionally-supported constructs that it does not support (C++0x 1.4). * Whether an argument of class type with a non-trivial copy constructor or destructor can be passed to ... (C++0x 5.2.2). Such argument passing is supported, using the same pass-by-invisible-reference approach used for normal function arguments of such types. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C++ Implementation Link: next: C Extensions Link: prev: Conditionally-supported behavior Previous: Conditionally-supported behavior, Up: C++ Implementation ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5.2 Exception Handling * In the situation where no matching handler is found, it is implementation-defined whether or not the stack is unwound before std::terminate() is called (C++98 15.5.1). The stack is not unwound before std::terminate is called. c Copyright (C) 1988-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: Top Link: next: Statement Exprs Link: prev: Exception handling Next: C++ Extensions, Previous: C++ Implementation, Up: Top ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6 Extensions to the C Language Family GNU C provides several language features not found in ISO standard C. (The -pedantic option directs GCC to print a warning message if any of these features is used.) To test for the availability of these features in conditional compilation, check for a predefined macro __GNUC__, which is always defined under GCC. These extensions are available in C and Objective-C. Most of them are also available in C++. See Extensions to the C++ Language, for extensions that apply only to C++. Some features that are in ISO C99 but not C90 or C++ are also, as extensions, accepted by GCC in C90 mode and in C++. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.1 Statements and Declarations in Expressions A compound statement enclosed in parentheses may appear as an expression in GNU C. This allows you to use loops, switches, and local variables within an expression. Recall that a compound statement is a sequence of statements surrounded by braces; in this construct, parentheses go around the braces. For example: ({ int y = foo (); int z; if (y > 0) z = y; else z = - y; z; }) is a valid (though slightly more complex than necessary) expression for the absolute value of foo (). The last thing in the compound statement should be an expression followed by a semicolon; the value of this subexpression serves as the value of the entire construct. (If you use some other kind of statement last within the braces, the construct has type void, and thus effectively no value.) This feature is especially useful in making macro definitions “safe” (so that they evaluate each operand exactly once). For example, the “maximum” function is commonly defined as a macro in standard C as follows: #define max(a,b) ((a) > (b) ? (a) : (b)) But this definition computes either a or b twice, with bad results if the operand has side effects. In GNU C, if you know the type of the operands (here taken as int), you can avoid this problem by defining the macro as follows: #define maxint(a,b) \ ({int _a = (a), _b = (b); _a > _b ? _a : _b; }) Note that introducing variable declarations (as we do in maxint) can cause variable shadowing, so while this example using the max macro produces correct results: int _a = 1, _b = 2, c; c = max (_a, _b); this example using maxint will not: int _a = 1, _b = 2, c; c = maxint (_a, _b); This problem may for instance occur when we use this pattern recursively, like so: #define maxint3(a, b, c) \ ({int _a = (a), _b = (b), _c = (c); maxint (maxint (_a, _b), _c); }) Embedded statements are not allowed in constant expressions, such as the value of an enumeration constant, the width of a bit-field, or the initial value of a static variable. If you don't know the type of the operand, you can still do this, but you must use typeof or __auto_type (see Typeof). In G++, the result value of a statement expression undergoes array and function pointer decay, and is returned by value to the enclosing expression. For instance, if A is a class, then A a; ({a;}).Foo () constructs a temporary A object to hold the result of the statement expression, and that is used to invoke Foo. Therefore the this pointer observed by Foo is not the address of a. In a statement expression, any temporaries created within a statement are destroyed at that statement's end. This makes statement expressions inside macros slightly different from function calls. In the latter case temporaries introduced during argument evaluation are destroyed at the end of the statement that includes the function call. In the statement expression case they are destroyed during the statement expression. For instance, #define macro(a) ({__typeof__(a) b = (a); b + 3; }) template T function(T a) { T b = a; return b + 3; } void foo () { macro (X ()); function (X ()); } has different places where temporaries are destroyed. For the macro case, the temporary X is destroyed just after the initialization of b. In the function case that temporary is destroyed when the function returns. These considerations mean that it is probably a bad idea to use statement expressions of this form in header files that are designed to work with C++. (Note that some versions of the GNU C Library contained header files using statement expressions that lead to precisely this bug.) Jumping into a statement expression with goto or using a switch statement outside the statement expression with a case or default label inside the statement expression is not permitted. Jumping into a statement expression with a computed goto (see Labels as Values) has undefined behavior. Jumping out of a statement expression is permitted, but if the statement expression is part of a larger expression then it is unspecified which other subexpressions of that expression have been evaluated except where the language definition requires certain subexpressions to be evaluated before or after the statement expression. A break or continue statement inside of a statement expression used in while, do or for loop or switch statement condition or for statement init or increment expressions jumps to an outer loop or switch statement if any (otherwise it is an error), rather than to the loop or switch statement in whose condition or init or increment expression it appears. In any case, as with a function call, the evaluation of a statement expression is not interleaved with the evaluation of other parts of the containing expression. For example, foo (), (({ bar1 (); goto a; 0; }) + bar2 ()), baz(); calls foo and bar1 and does not call baz but may or may not call bar2. If bar2 is called, it is called after foo and before bar1. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Labels as Values Link: prev: Statement Exprs Next: Labels as Values, Previous: Statement Exprs, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.2 Locally Declared Labels GCC allows you to declare local labels in any nested block scope. A local label is just like an ordinary label, but you can only reference it (with a goto statement, or by taking its address) within the block in which it is declared. A local label declaration looks like this: __label__ label; or __label__ label1, label2, /* … */; Local label declarations must come at the beginning of the block, before any ordinary declarations or statements. The label declaration defines the label name, but does not define the label itself. You must do this in the usual way, with label:, within the statements of the statement expression. The local label feature is useful for complex macros. If a macro contains nested loops, a goto can be useful for breaking out of them. However, an ordinary label whose scope is the whole function cannot be used: if the macro can be expanded several times in one function, the label is multiply defined in that function. A local label avoids this problem. For example: #define SEARCH(value, array, target) \ do { \ __label__ found; \ typeof (target) _SEARCH_target = (target); \ typeof (*(array)) *_SEARCH_array = (array); \ int i, j; \ int value; \ for (i = 0; i < max; i++) \ for (j = 0; j < max; j++) \ if (_SEARCH_array[i][j] == _SEARCH_target) \ { (value) = i; goto found; } \ (value) = -1; \ found:; \ } while (0) This could also be written using a statement expression: #define SEARCH(array, target) \ ({ \ __label__ found; \ typeof (target) _SEARCH_target = (target); \ typeof (*(array)) *_SEARCH_array = (array); \ int i, j; \ int value; \ for (i = 0; i < max; i++) \ for (j = 0; j < max; j++) \ if (_SEARCH_array[i][j] == _SEARCH_target) \ { value = i; goto found; } \ value = -1; \ found: \ value; \ }) Local label declarations also make the labels they declare visible to nested functions, if there are any. See Nested Functions, for details. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Labels as Values, Previous: Statement Exprs, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Nested Functions Link: prev: Local Labels Next: Nested Functions, Previous: Local Labels, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.3 Labels as Values You can get the address of a label defined in the current function (or a containing function) with the unary operator '&&'. The value has type void *. This value is a constant and can be used wherever a constant of that type is valid. For example: void *ptr; /* … */ ptr = &&foo; To use these values, you need to be able to jump to one. This is done with the computed goto statement^3, goto *exp;. For example, goto *ptr; Any expression of type void * is allowed. One way of using these constants is in initializing a static array that serves as a jump table: static void *array[] = { &&foo, &&bar, &&hack }; Then you can select a label with indexing, like this: goto *array[i]; Note that this does not check whether the subscript is in bounds—array indexing in C never does that. Such an array of label values serves a purpose much like that of the switch statement. The switch statement is cleaner, so use that rather than an array unless the problem does not fit a switch statement very well. Another use of label values is in an interpreter for threaded code. The labels within the interpreter function can be stored in the threaded code for super-fast dispatching. You may not use this mechanism to jump to code in a different function. If you do that, totally unpredictable things happen. The best way to avoid this is to store the label address only in automatic variables and never pass it as an argument. An alternate way to write the above example is static const int array[] = { &&foo - &&foo, &&bar - &&foo, &&hack - &&foo }; goto *(&&foo + array[i]); This is more friendly to code living in shared libraries, as it reduces the number of dynamic relocations that are needed, and by consequence, allows the data to be read-only. This alternative with label differences is not supported for the AVR target, please use the first approach for AVR programs. The &&foo expressions for the same label might have different values if the containing function is inlined or cloned. If a program relies on them being always the same, __attribute__((__noinline__,__noclone__)) should be used to prevent inlining and cloning. If &&foo is used in a static variable initializer, inlining and cloning is forbidden. Footnotes (3) The analogous feature in Fortran is called an assigned goto, but that name seems inappropriate in C, where one can do more than simply store label addresses in label variables. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Nested Functions, Previous: Local Labels, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Nonlocal Gotos Link: prev: Labels as Values Next: Nonlocal Gotos, Previous: Labels as Values, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.4 Nested Functions A nested function is a function defined inside another function. Nested functions are supported as an extension in GNU C, but are not supported by GNU C++. The nested function's name is local to the block where it is defined. For example, here we define a nested function named square, and call it twice: foo (double a, double b) { double square (double z) { return z * z; } return square (a) + square (b); } The nested function can access all the variables of the containing function that are visible at the point of its definition. This is called lexical scoping. For example, here we show a nested function which uses an inherited variable named offset: bar (int *array, int offset, int size) { int access (int *array, int index) { return array[index + offset]; } int i; /* … */ for (i = 0; i < size; i++) /* … */ access (array, i) /* … */ } Nested function definitions are permitted within functions in the places where variable definitions are allowed; that is, in any block, mixed with the other declarations and statements in the block. It is possible to call the nested function from outside the scope of its name by storing its address or passing the address to another function: hack (int *array, int size) { void store (int index, int value) { array[index] = value; } intermediate (store, size); } Here, the function intermediate receives the address of store as an argument. If intermediate calls store, the arguments given to store are used to store into array. But this technique works only so long as the containing function (hack, in this example) does not exit. If you try to call the nested function through its address after the containing function exits, all hell breaks loose. If you try to call it after a containing scope level exits, and if it refers to some of the variables that are no longer in scope, you may be lucky, but it's not wise to take the risk. If, however, the nested function does not refer to anything that has gone out of scope, you should be safe. GCC implements taking the address of a nested function using a technique called trampolines. This technique was described in Lexical Closures for C++ (Thomas M. Breuel, USENIX C++ Conference Proceedings, October 17-21, 1988). A nested function can jump to a label inherited from a containing function, provided the label is explicitly declared in the containing function (see Local Labels). Such a jump returns instantly to the containing function, exiting the nested function that did the goto and any intermediate functions as well. Here is an example: bar (int *array, int offset, int size) { __label__ failure; int access (int *array, int index) { if (index > size) goto failure; return array[index + offset]; } int i; /* … */ for (i = 0; i < size; i++) /* … */ access (array, i) /* … */ /* … */ return 0; /* Control comes here from access if it detects an error. */ failure: return -1; } A nested function always has no linkage. Declaring one with extern or static is erroneous. If you need to declare the nested function before its definition, use auto (which is otherwise meaningless for function declarations). bar (int *array, int offset, int size) { __label__ failure; auto int access (int *, int); /* … */ int access (int *array, int index) { if (index > size) goto failure; return array[index + offset]; } /* … */ } ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Nonlocal Gotos, Previous: Labels as Values, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Constructing Calls Link: prev: Nested Functions Next: Constructing Calls, Previous: Nested Functions, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.5 Nonlocal Gotos GCC provides the built-in functions __builtin_setjmp and __builtin_longjmp which are similar to, but not interchangeable with, the C library functions setjmp and longjmp. The built-in versions are used internally by GCC's libraries to implement exception handling on some targets. You should use the standard C library functions declared in in user code instead of the builtins. The built-in versions of these functions use GCC's normal mechanisms to save and restore registers using the stack on function entry and exit. The jump buffer argument buf holds only the information needed to restore the stack frame, rather than the entire set of saved register values. An important caveat is that GCC arranges to save and restore only those registers known to the specific architecture variant being compiled for. This can make __builtin_setjmp and __builtin_longjmp more efficient than their library counterparts in some cases, but it can also cause incorrect and mysterious behavior when mixing with code that uses the full register set. You should declare the jump buffer argument buf to the built-in functions as: #include intptr_t buf[5]; Built-in Function: int __builtin_setjmp (intptr_t *buf) This function saves the current stack context in buf. __builtin_setjmp returns 0 when returning directly, and 1 when returning from __builtin_longjmp using the same buf. Built-in Function: void __builtin_longjmp (intptr_t *buf, int val) This function restores the stack context in buf, saved by a previous call to __builtin_setjmp. After __builtin_longjmp is finished, the program resumes execution as if the matching __builtin_setjmp returns the value val, which must be 1. Because __builtin_longjmp depends on the function return mechanism to restore the stack context, it cannot be called from the same function calling __builtin_setjmp to initialize buf. It can only be called from a function called (directly or indirectly) from the function calling __builtin_setjmp. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Constructing Calls, Previous: Nested Functions, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Typeof Link: prev: Nonlocal Gotos Next: Typeof, Previous: Nonlocal Gotos, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.6 Constructing Function Calls Using the built-in functions described below, you can record the arguments a function received, and call another function with the same arguments, without knowing the number or types of the arguments. You can also record the return value of that function call, and later return that value, without knowing what data type the function tried to return (as long as your caller expects that data type). However, these built-in functions may interact badly with some sophisticated features or other extensions of the language. It is, therefore, not recommended to use them outside very simple functions acting as mere forwarders for their arguments. Built-in Function: void * __builtin_apply_args () This built-in function returns a pointer to data describing how to perform a call with the same arguments as are passed to the current function. The function saves the arg pointer register, structure value address, and all registers that might be used to pass arguments to a function into a block of memory allocated on the stack. Then it returns the address of that block. Built-in Function: void * __builtin_apply (void (*function)(), void *arguments, size_t size) This built-in function invokes function with a copy of the parameters described by arguments and size. The value of arguments should be the value returned by __builtin_apply_args. The argument size specifies the size of the stack argument data, in bytes. This function returns a pointer to data describing how to return whatever value is returned by function. The data is saved in a block of memory allocated on the stack. It is not always simple to compute the proper value for size. The value is used by __builtin_apply to compute the amount of data that should be pushed on the stack and copied from the incoming argument area. Built-in Function: void __builtin_return (void *result) This built-in function returns the value described by result from the containing function. You should specify, for result, a value returned by __builtin_apply. Built-in Function: __builtin_va_arg_pack () This built-in function represents all anonymous arguments of an inline function. It can be used only in inline functions that are always inlined, never compiled as a separate function, such as those using __attribute__ ((__always_inline__)) or __attribute__ ((__gnu_inline__)) extern inline functions. It must be only passed as last argument to some other function with variable arguments. This is useful for writing small wrapper inlines for variable argument functions, when using preprocessor macros is undesirable. For example: extern int myprintf (FILE *f, const char *format, ...); extern inline __attribute__ ((__gnu_inline__)) int myprintf (FILE *f, const char *format, ...) { int r = fprintf (f, "myprintf: "); if (r < 0) return r; int s = fprintf (f, format, __builtin_va_arg_pack ()); if (s < 0) return s; return r + s; } Built-in Function: size_t __builtin_va_arg_pack_len () This built-in function returns the number of anonymous arguments of an inline function. It can be used only in inline functions that are always inlined, never compiled as a separate function, such as those using __attribute__ ((__always_inline__)) or __attribute__ ((__gnu_inline__)) extern inline functions. For example following does link- or run-time checking of open arguments for optimized code: #ifdef __OPTIMIZE__ extern inline __attribute__((__gnu_inline__)) int myopen (const char *path, int oflag, ...) { if (__builtin_va_arg_pack_len () > 1) warn_open_too_many_arguments (); if (__builtin_constant_p (oflag)) { if ((oflag & O_CREAT) != 0 && __builtin_va_arg_pack_len () < 1) { warn_open_missing_mode (); return __open_2 (path, oflag); } return open (path, oflag, __builtin_va_arg_pack ()); } if (__builtin_va_arg_pack_len () < 1) return __open_2 (path, oflag); return open (path, oflag, __builtin_va_arg_pack ()); } #endif ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Typeof, Previous: Nonlocal Gotos, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Conditionals Link: prev: Constructing Calls Next: Conditionals, Previous: Constructing Calls, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.7 Referring to a Type with typeof Another way to refer to the type of an expression is with typeof. The syntax of using of this keyword looks like sizeof, but the construct acts semantically like a type name defined with typedef. There are two ways of writing the argument to typeof: with an expression or with a type. Here is an example with an expression: typeof (x[0](1)) This assumes that x is an array of pointers to functions; the type described is that of the values of the functions. Here is an example with a typename as the argument: typeof (int *) Here the type described is that of pointers to int. If you are writing a header file that must work when included in ISO C programs, write __typeof__ instead of typeof. See Alternate Keywords. A typeof construct can be used anywhere a typedef name can be used. For example, you can use it in a declaration, in a cast, or inside of sizeof or typeof. The operand of typeof is evaluated for its side effects if and only if it is an expression of variably modified type or the name of such a type. typeof is often useful in conjunction with statement expressions (see Statement Exprs). Here is how the two together can be used to define a safe “maximum” macro which operates on any arithmetic type and evaluates each of its arguments exactly once: #define max(a,b) \ ({ typeof (a) _a = (a); \ typeof (b) _b = (b); \ _a > _b ? _a : _b; }) The reason for using names that start with underscores for the local variables is to avoid conflicts with variable names that occur within the expressions that are substituted for a and b. Eventually we hope to design a new form of declaration syntax that allows you to declare variables whose scopes start only after their initializers; this will be a more reliable way to prevent such conflicts. Some more examples of the use of typeof: * This declares y with the type of what x points to. typeof (*x) y; * This declares y as an array of such values. typeof (*x) y[4]; * This declares y as an array of pointers to characters: typeof (typeof (char *)[4]) y; It is equivalent to the following traditional C declaration: char *y[4]; To see the meaning of the declaration using typeof, and why it might be a useful way to write, rewrite it with these macros: #define pointer(T) typeof(T *) #define array(T, N) typeof(T [N]) Now the declaration can be rewritten this way: array (pointer (char), 4) y; Thus, array (pointer (char), 4) is the type of arrays of 4 pointers to char. In GNU C, but not GNU C++, you may also declare the type of a variable as __auto_type. In that case, the declaration must declare only one variable, whose declarator must just be an identifier, the declaration must be initialized, and the type of the variable is determined by the initializer; the name of the variable is not in scope until after the initializer. (In C++, you should use C++11 auto for this purpose.) Using __auto_type, the “maximum” macro above could be written as: #define max(a,b) \ ({ __auto_type _a = (a); \ __auto_type _b = (b); \ _a > _b ? _a : _b; }) Using __auto_type instead of typeof has two advantages: * Each argument to the macro appears only once in the expansion of the macro. This prevents the size of the macro expansion growing exponentially when calls to such macros are nested inside arguments of such macros. * If the argument to the macro has variably modified type, it is evaluated only once when using __auto_type, but twice if typeof is used. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Conditionals, Previous: Constructing Calls, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: __int128 Link: prev: Typeof ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.8 Conditionals with Omitted Operands The middle operand in a conditional expression may be omitted. Then if the first operand is nonzero, its value is the value of the conditional expression. Therefore, the expression x ? : y has the value of x if that is nonzero; otherwise, the value of y. This example is perfectly equivalent to x ? x : y In this simple case, the ability to omit the middle operand is not especially useful. When it becomes useful is when the first operand does, or may (if it is a macro argument), contain a side effect. Then repeating the operand in the middle would perform the side effect twice. Omitting the middle operand uses the value already computed without the undesirable effects of recomputing it. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Long Long Link: prev: Conditionals Next: Long Long, Previous: Conditionals, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.9 128-bit Integers As an extension the integer scalar type __int128 is supported for targets which have an integer mode wide enough to hold 128 bits. Simply write __int128 for a signed 128-bit integer, or unsigned __int128 for an unsigned 128-bit integer. There is no support in GCC for expressing an integer constant of type __int128 for targets with long long integer less than 128 bits wide. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Complex Link: prev: __int128 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.10 Double-Word Integers ISO C99 and ISO C++11 support data types for integers that are at least 64 bits wide, and as an extension GCC supports them in C90 and C++98 modes. Simply write long long int for a signed integer, or unsigned long long int for an unsigned integer. To make an integer constant of type long long int, add the suffix 'LL' to the integer. To make an integer constant of type unsigned long long int, add the suffix 'ULL' to the integer. You can use these types in arithmetic like any other integer types. Addition, subtraction, and bitwise boolean operations on these types are open-coded on all types of machines. Multiplication is open-coded if the machine supports a fullword-to-doubleword widening multiply instruction. Division and shifts are open-coded only on machines that provide special support. The operations that are not open-coded use special library routines that come with GCC. There may be pitfalls when you use long long types for function arguments without function prototypes. If a function expects type int for its argument, and you pass a value of type long long int, confusion results because the caller and the subroutine disagree about the number of bytes for the argument. Likewise, if the function expects long long int and you pass int. The best way to avoid such problems is to use prototypes. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Floating Types Link: prev: Long Long Next: Floating Types, Previous: Long Long, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.11 Complex Numbers ISO C99 supports complex floating data types, and as an extension GCC supports them in C90 mode and in C++. GCC also supports complex integer data types which are not part of ISO C99. You can declare complex types using the keyword _Complex. As an extension, the older GNU keyword __complex__ is also supported. For example, '_Complex double x;' declares x as a variable whose real part and imaginary part are both of type double. '_Complex short int y;' declares y to have real and imaginary parts of type short int; this is not likely to be useful, but it shows that the set of complex types is complete. To write a constant with a complex data type, use the suffix 'i' or 'j' (either one; they are equivalent). For example, 2.5fi has type _Complex float and 3i has type _Complex int. Such a constant always has a pure imaginary value, but you can form any complex value you like by adding one to a real constant. This is a GNU extension; if you have an ISO C99 conforming C library (such as the GNU C Library), and want to construct complex constants of floating type, you should include and use the macros I or _Complex_I instead. The ISO C++14 library also defines the 'i' suffix, so C++14 code that includes the '' header cannot use 'i' for the GNU extension. The 'j' suffix still has the GNU meaning. To extract the real part of a complex-valued expression exp, write __real__ exp. Likewise, use __imag__ to extract the imaginary part. This is a GNU extension; for values of floating type, you should use the ISO C99 functions crealf, creal, creall, cimagf, cimag and cimagl, declared in and also provided as built-in functions by GCC. The operator '~' performs complex conjugation when used on a value with a complex type. This is a GNU extension; for values of floating type, you should use the ISO C99 functions conjf, conj and conjl, declared in and also provided as built-in functions by GCC. GCC can allocate complex automatic variables in a noncontiguous fashion; it's even possible for the real part to be in a register while the imaginary part is on the stack (or vice versa). Only the DWARF debug info format can represent this, so use of DWARF is recommended. If you are using the stabs debug info format, GCC describes a noncontiguous complex variable as if it were two separate variables of noncomplex type. If the variable's actual name is foo, the two fictitious variables are named foo$real and foo$imag. You can examine and set these two fictitious variables with your debugger. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Floating Types, Previous: Long Long, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Half-Precision Link: prev: Complex Next: Half-Precision, Previous: Complex, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.12 Additional Floating Types ISO/IEC TS 18661-3:2015 defines C support for additional floating types _Floatn and _Floatnx, and GCC supports these type names; the set of types supported depends on the target architecture. These types are not supported when compiling C++. Constants with these types use suffixes fn or Fn and fnx or Fnx. These type names can be used together with _Complex to declare complex types. As an extension, GNU C and GNU C++ support additional floating types, which are not supported by all targets. * __float128 is available on i386, x86_64, IA-64, and hppa HP-UX, as well as on PowerPC GNU/Linux targets that enable the vector scalar (VSX) instruction set. __float128 supports the 128-bit floating type. On i386, x86_64, PowerPC, and IA-64 other than HP-UX, __float128 is an alias for _Float128. On hppa and IA-64 HP-UX, __float128 is an alias for long double. * __float80 is available on the i386, x86_64, and IA-64 targets, and supports the 80-bit (XFmode) floating type. It is an alias for the type name _Float64x on these targets. * __ibm128 is available on PowerPC targets, and provides access to the IBM extended double format which is the current format used for long double. When long double transitions to __float128 on PowerPC in the future, __ibm128 will remain for use in conversions between the two types. Support for these additional types includes the arithmetic operators: add, subtract, multiply, divide; unary arithmetic operators; relational operators; equality operators; and conversions to and from integer and other floating types. Use a suffix 'w' or 'W' in a literal constant of type __float80 or type __ibm128. Use a suffix 'q' or 'Q' for _float128. In order to use _Float128, __float128, and __ibm128 on PowerPC Linux systems, you must use the -mfloat128 option. It is expected in future versions of GCC that _Float128 and __float128 will be enabled automatically. The _Float128 type is supported on all systems where __float128 is supported or where long double has the IEEE binary128 format. The _Float64x type is supported on all systems where __float128 is supported. The _Float32 type is supported on all systems supporting IEEE binary32; the _Float64 and _Float32x types are supported on all systems supporting IEEE binary64. The _Float16 type is supported on AArch64 systems by default, and on ARM systems when the IEEE format for 16-bit floating-point types is selected with -mfp16-format=ieee. GCC does not currently support _Float128x on any systems. On the i386, x86_64, IA-64, and HP-UX targets, you can declare complex types using the corresponding internal complex type, XCmode for __float80 type and TCmode for __float128 type: typedef _Complex float __attribute__((mode(TC))) _Complex128; typedef _Complex float __attribute__((mode(XC))) _Complex80; On the PowerPC Linux VSX targets, you can declare complex types using the corresponding internal complex type, KCmode for __float128 type and ICmode for __ibm128 type: typedef _Complex float __attribute__((mode(KC))) _Complex_float128; typedef _Complex float __attribute__((mode(IC))) _Complex_ibm128; ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Half-Precision, Previous: Complex, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Decimal Float Link: prev: Floating Types Next: Decimal Float, Previous: Floating Types, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.13 Half-Precision Floating Point On ARM and AArch64 targets, GCC supports half-precision (16-bit) floating point via the __fp16 type defined in the ARM C Language Extensions. On ARM systems, you must enable this type explicitly with the -mfp16-format command-line option in order to use it. ARM targets support two incompatible representations for half-precision floating-point values. You must choose one of the representations and use it consistently in your program. Specifying -mfp16-format=ieee selects the IEEE 754-2008 format. This format can represent normalized values in the range of 2^{-14} to 65504. There are 11 bits of significand precision, approximately 3 decimal digits. Specifying -mfp16-format=alternative selects the ARM alternative format. This representation is similar to the IEEE format, but does not support infinities or NaNs. Instead, the range of exponents is extended, so that this format can represent normalized values in the range of 2^{-14} to 131008. The GCC port for AArch64 only supports the IEEE 754-2008 format, and does not require use of the -mfp16-format command-line option. The __fp16 type may only be used as an argument to intrinsics defined in , or as a storage format. For purposes of arithmetic and other operations, __fp16 values in C or C++ expressions are automatically promoted to float. The ARM target provides hardware support for conversions between __fp16 and float values as an extension to VFP and NEON (Advanced SIMD), and from ARMv8-A provides hardware support for conversions between __fp16 and double values. GCC generates code using these hardware instructions if you compile with options to select an FPU that provides them; for example, -mfpu=neon-fp16 -mfloat-abi=softfp, in addition to the -mfp16-format option to select a half-precision format. Language-level support for the __fp16 data type is independent of whether GCC generates code using hardware floating-point instructions. In cases where hardware support is not specified, GCC implements conversions between __fp16 and other types as library calls. It is recommended that portable code use the _Float16 type defined by ISO/IEC TS 18661-3:2015. See Floating Types. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Decimal Float, Previous: Floating Types, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Hex Floats Link: prev: Half-Precision Next: Hex Floats, Previous: Half-Precision, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.14 Decimal Floating Types As an extension, GNU C supports decimal floating types as defined in the N1312 draft of ISO/IEC WDTR24732. Support for decimal floating types in GCC will evolve as the draft technical report changes. Calling conventions for any target might also change. Not all targets support decimal floating types. The decimal floating types are _Decimal32, _Decimal64, and _Decimal128. They use a radix of ten, unlike the floating types float, double, and long double whose radix is not specified by the C standard but is usually two. Support for decimal floating types includes the arithmetic operators add, subtract, multiply, divide; unary arithmetic operators; relational operators; equality operators; and conversions to and from integer and other floating types. Use a suffix 'df' or 'DF' in a literal constant of type _Decimal32, 'dd' or 'DD' for _Decimal64, and 'dl' or 'DL' for _Decimal128. GCC support of decimal float as specified by the draft technical report is incomplete: * When the value of a decimal floating type cannot be represented in the integer type to which it is being converted, the result is undefined rather than the result value specified by the draft technical report. * GCC does not provide the C library functionality associated with math.h, fenv.h, stdio.h, stdlib.h, and wchar.h, which must come from a separate C library implementation. Because of this the GNU C compiler does not define macro __STDC_DEC_FP__ to indicate that the implementation conforms to the technical report. Types _Decimal32, _Decimal64, and _Decimal128 are supported by the DWARF debug information format. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Hex Floats, Previous: Half-Precision, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Fixed-Point Link: prev: Decimal Float Next: Fixed-Point, Previous: Decimal Float, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.15 Hex Floats ISO C99 and ISO C++17 support floating-point numbers written not only in the usual decimal notation, such as 1.55e1, but also numbers such as 0x1.fp3 written in hexadecimal format. As a GNU extension, GCC supports this in C90 mode (except in some cases when strictly conforming) and in C++98, C++11 and C++14 modes. In that format the '0x' hex introducer and the 'p' or 'P' exponent field are mandatory. The exponent is a decimal number that indicates the power of 2 by which the significant part is multiplied. Thus '0x1.f' is 1 15/16, 'p3' multiplies it by 8, and the value of 0x1.fp3 is the same as 1.55e1. Unlike for floating-point numbers in the decimal notation the exponent is always required in the hexadecimal notation. Otherwise the compiler would not be able to resolve the ambiguity of, e.g., 0x1.f. This could mean 1.0f or 1.9375 since 'f' is also the extension for floating-point constants of type float. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Named Address Spaces Link: prev: Hex Floats Next: Named Address Spaces, Previous: Hex Floats, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.16 Fixed-Point Types As an extension, GNU C supports fixed-point types as defined in the N1169 draft of ISO/IEC DTR 18037. Support for fixed-point types in GCC will evolve as the draft technical report changes. Calling conventions for any target might also change. Not all targets support fixed-point types. The fixed-point types are short _Fract, _Fract, long _Fract, long long _Fract, unsigned short _Fract, unsigned _Fract, unsigned long _Fract, unsigned long long _Fract, _Sat short _Fract, _Sat _Fract, _Sat long _Fract, _Sat long long _Fract, _Sat unsigned short _Fract, _Sat unsigned _Fract, _Sat unsigned long _Fract, _Sat unsigned long long _Fract, short _Accum, _Accum, long _Accum, long long _Accum, unsigned short _Accum, unsigned _Accum, unsigned long _Accum, unsigned long long _Accum, _Sat short _Accum, _Sat _Accum, _Sat long _Accum, _Sat long long _Accum, _Sat unsigned short _Accum, _Sat unsigned _Accum, _Sat unsigned long _Accum, _Sat unsigned long long _Accum. Fixed-point data values contain fractional and optional integral parts. The format of fixed-point data varies and depends on the target machine. Support for fixed-point types includes: * prefix and postfix increment and decrement operators (++, --) * unary arithmetic operators (+, -, !) * binary arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /) * binary shift operators (<<, >>) * relational operators (<, <=, >=, >) * equality operators (==, !=) * assignment operators (+=, -=, *=, /=, <<=, >>=) * conversions to and from integer, floating-point, or fixed-point types Use a suffix in a fixed-point literal constant: * 'hr' or 'HR' for short _Fract and _Sat short _Fract * 'r' or 'R' for _Fract and _Sat _Fract * 'lr' or 'LR' for long _Fract and _Sat long _Fract * 'llr' or 'LLR' for long long _Fract and _Sat long long _Fract * 'uhr' or 'UHR' for unsigned short _Fract and _Sat unsigned short _Fract * 'ur' or 'UR' for unsigned _Fract and _Sat unsigned _Fract * 'ulr' or 'ULR' for unsigned long _Fract and _Sat unsigned long _Fract * 'ullr' or 'ULLR' for unsigned long long _Fract and _Sat unsigned long long _Fract * 'hk' or 'HK' for short _Accum and _Sat short _Accum * 'k' or 'K' for _Accum and _Sat _Accum * 'lk' or 'LK' for long _Accum and _Sat long _Accum * 'llk' or 'LLK' for long long _Accum and _Sat long long _Accum * 'uhk' or 'UHK' for unsigned short _Accum and _Sat unsigned short _Accum * 'uk' or 'UK' for unsigned _Accum and _Sat unsigned _Accum * 'ulk' or 'ULK' for unsigned long _Accum and _Sat unsigned long _Accum * 'ullk' or 'ULLK' for unsigned long long _Accum and _Sat unsigned long long _Accum GCC support of fixed-point types as specified by the draft technical report is incomplete: * Pragmas to control overflow and rounding behaviors are not implemented. Fixed-point types are supported by the DWARF debug information format. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Named Address Spaces, Previous: Hex Floats, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Zero Length Link: prev: Fixed-Point Next: Zero Length, Previous: Fixed-Point, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.17 Named Address Spaces As an extension, GNU C supports named address spaces as defined in the N1275 draft of ISO/IEC DTR 18037. Support for named address spaces in GCC will evolve as the draft technical report changes. Calling conventions for any target might also change. At present, only the AVR, SPU, M32C, RL78, and x86 targets support address spaces other than the generic address space. Address space identifiers may be used exactly like any other C type qualifier (e.g., const or volatile). See the N1275 document for more details. 6.17.1 AVR Named Address Spaces On the AVR target, there are several address spaces that can be used in order to put read-only data into the flash memory and access that data by means of the special instructions LPM or ELPM needed to read from flash. Devices belonging to avrtiny and avrxmega3 can access flash memory by means of LD* instructions because the flash memory is mapped into the RAM address space. There is no need for language extensions like __flash or attribute progmem. The default linker description files for these devices cater for that feature and .rodata stays in flash: The compiler just generates LD* instructions, and the linker script adds core specific offsets to all .rodata symbols: 0x4000 in the case of avrtiny and 0x8000 in the case of avrxmega3. See AVR Options for a list of respective devices. For devices not in avrtiny or avrxmega3, any data including read-only data is located in RAM (the generic address space) because flash memory is not visible in the RAM address space. In order to locate read-only data in flash memory and to generate the right instructions to access this data without using (inline) assembler code, special address spaces are needed. __flash The __flash qualifier locates data in the .progmem.data section. Data is read using the LPM instruction. Pointers to this address space are 16 bits wide. __flash1 __flash2 __flash3 __flash4 __flash5 These are 16-bit address spaces locating data in section .progmemN.data where N refers to address space __flashN. The compiler sets the RAMPZ segment register appropriately before reading data by means of the ELPM instruction. __memx This is a 24-bit address space that linearizes flash and RAM: If the high bit of the address is set, data is read from RAM using the lower two bytes as RAM address. If the high bit of the address is clear, data is read from flash with RAMPZ set according to the high byte of the address. See __builtin_avr_flash_segment. Objects in this address space are located in .progmemx.data. Example char my_read (const __flash char ** p) { /* p is a pointer to RAM that points to a pointer to flash. The first indirection of p reads that flash pointer from RAM and the second indirection reads a char from this flash address. */ return **p; } /* Locate array[] in flash memory */ const __flash int array[] = { 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 }; int i = 1; int main (void) { /* Return 17 by reading from flash memory */ return array[array[i]]; } For each named address space supported by avr-gcc there is an equally named but uppercase built-in macro defined. The purpose is to facilitate testing if respective address space support is available or not: #ifdef __FLASH const __flash int var = 1; int read_var (void) { return var; } #else #include /* From AVR-LibC */ const int var PROGMEM = 1; int read_var (void) { return (int) pgm_read_word (&var); } #endif /* __FLASH */ Notice that attribute progmem locates data in flash but accesses to these data read from generic address space, i.e. from RAM, so that you need special accessors like pgm_read_byte from AVR-LibC together with attribute progmem. Limitations and caveats * Reading across the 64 KiB section boundary of the __flash or __flashN address spaces shows undefined behavior. The only address space that supports reading across the 64 KiB flash segment boundaries is __memx. * If you use one of the __flashN address spaces you must arrange your linker script to locate the .progmemN.data sections according to your needs. * Any data or pointers to the non-generic address spaces must be qualified as const, i.e. as read-only data. This still applies if the data in one of these address spaces like software version number or calibration lookup table are intended to be changed after load time by, say, a boot loader. In this case the right qualification is const volatile so that the compiler must not optimize away known values or insert them as immediates into operands of instructions. * The following code initializes a variable pfoo located in static storage with a 24-bit address: extern const __memx char foo; const __memx void *pfoo = &foo; * On the reduced Tiny devices like ATtiny40, no address spaces are supported. Just use vanilla C / C++ code without overhead as outlined above. Attribute progmem is supported but works differently, see AVR Variable Attributes. 6.17.2 M32C Named Address Spaces On the M32C target, with the R8C and M16C CPU variants, variables qualified with __far are accessed using 32-bit addresses in order to access memory beyond the first 64 Ki bytes. If __far is used with the M32CM or M32C CPU variants, it has no effect. 6.17.3 RL78 Named Address Spaces On the RL78 target, variables qualified with __far are accessed with 32-bit pointers (20-bit addresses) rather than the default 16-bit addresses. Non-far variables are assumed to appear in the topmost 64 KiB of the address space. 6.17.4 SPU Named Address Spaces On the SPU target variables may be declared as belonging to another address space by qualifying the type with the __ea address space identifier: extern int __ea i; The compiler generates special code to access the variable i. It may use runtime library support, or generate special machine instructions to access that address space. 6.17.5 x86 Named Address Spaces On the x86 target, variables may be declared as being relative to the %fs or %gs segments. __seg_fs __seg_gs The object is accessed with the respective segment override prefix. The respective segment base must be set via some method specific to the operating system. Rather than require an expensive system call to retrieve the segment base, these address spaces are not considered to be subspaces of the generic (flat) address space. This means that explicit casts are required to convert pointers between these address spaces and the generic address space. In practice the application should cast to uintptr_t and apply the segment base offset that it installed previously. The preprocessor symbols __SEG_FS and __SEG_GS are defined when these address spaces are supported. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Zero Length, Previous: Fixed-Point, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Empty Structures Link: prev: Named Address Spaces Next: Empty Structures, Previous: Named Address Spaces, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.18 Arrays of Length Zero Declaring zero-length arrays is allowed in GNU C as an extension. A zero-length array can be useful as the last element of a structure that is really a header for a variable-length object: struct line { int length; char contents[0]; }; struct line *thisline = (struct line *) malloc (sizeof (struct line) + this_length); thisline->length = this_length; Although the size of a zero-length array is zero, an array member of this kind may increase the size of the enclosing type as a result of tail padding. The offset of a zero-length array member from the beginning of the enclosing structure is the same as the offset of an array with one or more elements of the same type. The alignment of a zero-length array is the same as the alignment of its elements. Declaring zero-length arrays in other contexts, including as interior members of structure objects or as non-member objects, is discouraged. Accessing elements of zero-length arrays declared in such contexts is undefined and may be diagnosed. In the absence of the zero-length array extension, in ISO C90 the contents array in the example above would typically be declared to have a single element. Unlike a zero-length array which only contributes to the size of the enclosing structure for the purposes of alignment, a one-element array always occupies at least as much space as a single object of the type. Although using one-element arrays this way is discouraged, GCC handles accesses to trailing one-element array members analogously to zero-length arrays. The preferred mechanism to declare variable-length types like struct line above is the ISO C99 flexible array member, with slightly different syntax and semantics: * Flexible array members are written as contents[] without the 0. * Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero. * Flexible array members may only appear as the last member of a struct that is otherwise non-empty. * A structure containing a flexible array member, or a union containing such a structure (possibly recursively), may not be a member of a structure or an element of an array. (However, these uses are permitted by GCC as extensions.) Non-empty initialization of zero-length arrays is treated like any case where there are more initializer elements than the array holds, in that a suitable warning about “excess elements in array” is given, and the excess elements (all of them, in this case) are ignored. GCC allows static initialization of flexible array members. This is equivalent to defining a new structure containing the original structure followed by an array of sufficient size to contain the data. E.g. in the following, f1 is constructed as if it were declared like f2. struct f1 { int x; int y[]; } f1 = { 1, { 2, 3, 4 } }; struct f2 { struct f1 f1; int data[3]; } f2 = { { 1 }, { 2, 3, 4 } }; The convenience of this extension is that f1 has the desired type, eliminating the need to consistently refer to f2.f1. This has symmetry with normal static arrays, in that an array of unknown size is also written with []. Of course, this extension only makes sense if the extra data comes at the end of a top-level object, as otherwise we would be overwriting data at subsequent offsets. To avoid undue complication and confusion with initialization of deeply nested arrays, we simply disallow any non-empty initialization except when the structure is the top-level object. For example: struct foo { int x; int y[]; }; struct bar { struct foo z; }; struct foo a = { 1, { 2, 3, 4 } }; // Valid. struct bar b = { { 1, { 2, 3, 4 } } }; // Invalid. struct bar c = { { 1, { } } }; // Valid. struct foo d[1] = { { 1, { 2, 3, 4 } } }; // Invalid. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Empty Structures, Previous: Named Address Spaces, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Variable Length Link: prev: Zero Length Next: Variable Length, Previous: Zero Length, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.19 Structures with No Members GCC permits a C structure to have no members: struct empty { }; The structure has size zero. In C++, empty structures are part of the language. G++ treats empty structures as if they had a single member of type char. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Variadic Macros Link: prev: Empty Structures Next: Variadic Macros, Previous: Empty Structures, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.20 Arrays of Variable Length Variable-length automatic arrays are allowed in ISO C99, and as an extension GCC accepts them in C90 mode and in C++. These arrays are declared like any other automatic arrays, but with a length that is not a constant expression. The storage is allocated at the point of declaration and deallocated when the block scope containing the declaration exits. For example: FILE * concat_fopen (char *s1, char *s2, char *mode) { char str[strlen (s1) + strlen (s2) + 1]; strcpy (str, s1); strcat (str, s2); return fopen (str, mode); } Jumping or breaking out of the scope of the array name deallocates the storage. Jumping into the scope is not allowed; you get an error message for it. As an extension, GCC accepts variable-length arrays as a member of a structure or a union. For example: void foo (int n) { struct S { int x[n]; }; } You can use the function alloca to get an effect much like variable-length arrays. The function alloca is available in many other C implementations (but not in all). On the other hand, variable-length arrays are more elegant. There are other differences between these two methods. Space allocated with alloca exists until the containing function returns. The space for a variable-length array is deallocated as soon as the array name's scope ends, unless you also use alloca in this scope. You can also use variable-length arrays as arguments to functions: struct entry tester (int len, char data[len][len]) { /* … */ } The length of an array is computed once when the storage is allocated and is remembered for the scope of the array in case you access it with sizeof. If you want to pass the array first and the length afterward, you can use a forward declaration in the parameter list—another GNU extension. struct entry tester (int len; char data[len][len], int len) { /* … */ } The 'int len' before the semicolon is a parameter forward declaration, and it serves the purpose of making the name len known when the declaration of data is parsed. You can write any number of such parameter forward declarations in the parameter list. They can be separated by commas or semicolons, but the last one must end with a semicolon, which is followed by the “real” parameter declarations. Each forward declaration must match a “real” declaration in parameter name and data type. ISO C99 does not support parameter forward declarations. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Variadic Macros, Previous: Empty Structures, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Escaped Newlines Link: prev: Variable Length Next: Escaped Newlines, Previous: Variable Length, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.21 Macros with a Variable Number of Arguments. In the ISO C standard of 1999, a macro can be declared to accept a variable number of arguments much as a function can. The syntax for defining the macro is similar to that of a function. Here is an example: #define debug(format, ...) fprintf (stderr, format, __VA_ARGS__) Here '…' is a variable argument. In the invocation of such a macro, it represents the zero or more tokens until the closing parenthesis that ends the invocation, including any commas. This set of tokens replaces the identifier __VA_ARGS__ in the macro body wherever it appears. See the CPP manual for more information. GCC has long supported variadic macros, and used a different syntax that allowed you to give a name to the variable arguments just like any other argument. Here is an example: #define debug(format, args...) fprintf (stderr, format, args) This is in all ways equivalent to the ISO C example above, but arguably more readable and descriptive. GNU CPP has two further variadic macro extensions, and permits them to be used with either of the above forms of macro definition. In standard C, you are not allowed to leave the variable argument out entirely; but you are allowed to pass an empty argument. For example, this invocation is invalid in ISO C, because there is no comma after the string: debug ("A message") GNU CPP permits you to completely omit the variable arguments in this way. In the above examples, the compiler would complain, though since the expansion of the macro still has the extra comma after the format string. To help solve this problem, CPP behaves specially for variable arguments used with the token paste operator, '##'. If instead you write #define debug(format, ...) fprintf (stderr, format, ## __VA_ARGS__) and if the variable arguments are omitted or empty, the '##' operator causes the preprocessor to remove the comma before it. If you do provide some variable arguments in your macro invocation, GNU CPP does not complain about the paste operation and instead places the variable arguments after the comma. Just like any other pasted macro argument, these arguments are not macro expanded. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Escaped Newlines, Previous: Variable Length, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Subscripting Link: prev: Variadic Macros Next: Subscripting, Previous: Variadic Macros, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.22 Slightly Looser Rules for Escaped Newlines The preprocessor treatment of escaped newlines is more relaxed than that specified by the C90 standard, which requires the newline to immediately follow a backslash. GCC's implementation allows whitespace in the form of spaces, horizontal and vertical tabs, and form feeds between the backslash and the subsequent newline. The preprocessor issues a warning, but treats it as a valid escaped newline and combines the two lines to form a single logical line. This works within comments and tokens, as well as between tokens. Comments are not treated as whitespace for the purposes of this relaxation, since they have not yet been replaced with spaces. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Pointer Arith Link: prev: Escaped Newlines Next: Pointer Arith, Previous: Escaped Newlines, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.23 Non-Lvalue Arrays May Have Subscripts In ISO C99, arrays that are not lvalues still decay to pointers, and may be subscripted, although they may not be modified or used after the next sequence point and the unary '&' operator may not be applied to them. As an extension, GNU C allows such arrays to be subscripted in C90 mode, though otherwise they do not decay to pointers outside C99 mode. For example, this is valid in GNU C though not valid in C90: struct foo {int a[4];}; struct foo f(); bar (int index) { return f().a[index]; } Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Variadic Pointer Args Link: prev: Subscripting Next: Variadic Pointer Args, Previous: Subscripting, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.24 Arithmetic on void- and Function-Pointers In GNU C, addition and subtraction operations are supported on pointers to void and on pointers to functions. This is done by treating the size of a void or of a function as 1. A consequence of this is that sizeof is also allowed on void and on function types, and returns 1. The option -Wpointer-arith requests a warning if these extensions are used. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Pointers to Arrays Link: prev: Pointer Arith Next: Pointers to Arrays, Previous: Pointer Arith, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.25 Pointer Arguments in Variadic Functions Standard C requires that pointer types used with va_arg in functions with variable argument lists either must be compatible with that of the actual argument, or that one type must be a pointer to void and the other a pointer to a character type. GNU C implements the POSIX XSI extension that additionally permits the use of va_arg with a pointer type to receive arguments of any other pointer type. In particular, in GNU C 'va_arg (ap, void *)' can safely be used to consume an argument of any pointer type. Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Initializers Link: prev: Variadic Pointer Args Next: Initializers, Previous: Variadic Pointer Args, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.26 Pointers to Arrays with Qualifiers Work as Expected In GNU C, pointers to arrays with qualifiers work similar to pointers to other qualified types. For example, a value of type int (*)[5] can be used to initialize a variable of type const int (*)[5]. These types are incompatible in ISO C because the const qualifier is formally attached to the element type of the array and not the array itself. extern void transpose (int N, int M, double out[M][N], const double in[N][M]); double x[3][2]; double y[2][3]; … transpose(3, 2, y, x); Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Compound Literals Link: prev: Pointers to Arrays Next: Compound Literals, Previous: Pointers to Arrays, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.27 Non-Constant Initializers As in standard C++ and ISO C99, the elements of an aggregate initializer for an automatic variable are not required to be constant expressions in GNU C. Here is an example of an initializer with run-time varying elements: foo (float f, float g) { float beat_freqs[2] = { f-g, f+g }; /* … */ } Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Designated Inits Link: prev: Initializers Next: Designated Inits, Previous: Initializers, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.28 Compound Literals A compound literal looks like a cast of a brace-enclosed aggregate initializer list. Its value is an object of the type specified in the cast, containing the elements specified in the initializer. Unlike the result of a cast, a compound literal is an lvalue. ISO C99 and later support compound literals. As an extension, GCC supports compound literals also in C90 mode and in C++, although as explained below, the C++ semantics are somewhat different. Usually, the specified type of a compound literal is a structure. Assume that struct foo and structure are declared as shown: struct foo {int a; char b[2];} structure; Here is an example of constructing a struct foo with a compound literal: structure = ((struct foo) {x + y, 'a', 0}); This is equivalent to writing the following: { struct foo temp = {x + y, 'a', 0}; structure = temp; } You can also construct an array, though this is dangerous in C++, as explained below. If all the elements of the compound literal are (made up of) simple constant expressions suitable for use in initializers of objects of static storage duration, then the compound literal can be coerced to a pointer to its first element and used in such an initializer, as shown here: char **foo = (char *[]) { "x", "y", "z" }; Compound literals for scalar types and union types are also allowed. In the following example the variable i is initialized to the value 2, the result of incrementing the unnamed object created by the compound literal. int i = ++(int) { 1 }; As a GNU extension, GCC allows initialization of objects with static storage duration by compound literals (which is not possible in ISO C99 because the initializer is not a constant). It is handled as if the object were initialized only with the brace-enclosed list if the types of the compound literal and the object match. The elements of the compound literal must be constant. If the object being initialized has array type of unknown size, the size is determined by the size of the compound literal. static struct foo x = (struct foo) {1, 'a', 'b'}; static int y[] = (int []) {1, 2, 3}; static int z[] = (int [3]) {1}; The above lines are equivalent to the following: static struct foo x = {1, 'a', 'b'}; static int y[] = {1, 2, 3}; static int z[] = {1, 0, 0}; In C, a compound literal designates an unnamed object with static or automatic storage duration. In C++, a compound literal designates a temporary object that only lives until the end of its full-expression. As a result, well-defined C code that takes the address of a subobject of a compound literal can be undefined in C++, so G++ rejects the conversion of a temporary array to a pointer. For instance, if the array compound literal example above appeared inside a function, any subsequent use of foo in C++ would have undefined behavior because the lifetime of the array ends after the declaration of foo. As an optimization, G++ sometimes gives array compound literals longer lifetimes: when the array either appears outside a function or has a const-qualified type. If foo and its initializer had elements of type char *const rather than char *, or if foo were a global variable, the array would have static storage duration. But it is probably safest just to avoid the use of array compound literals in C++ code. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Designated Inits, Previous: Initializers, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Case Ranges Link: prev: Compound Literals Next: Case Ranges, Previous: Compound Literals, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.29 Designated Initializers Standard C90 requires the elements of an initializer to appear in a fixed order, the same as the order of the elements in the array or structure being initialized. In ISO C99 you can give the elements in any order, specifying the array indices or structure field names they apply to, and GNU C allows this as an extension in C90 mode as well. This extension is not implemented in GNU C++. To specify an array index, write '[index] =' before the element value. For example, int a[6] = { [4] = 29, [2] = 15 }; is equivalent to int a[6] = { 0, 0, 15, 0, 29, 0 }; The index values must be constant expressions, even if the array being initialized is automatic. An alternative syntax for this that has been obsolete since GCC 2.5 but GCC still accepts is to write '[index]' before the element value, with no '='. To initialize a range of elements to the same value, write '[first ... last] = value'. This is a GNU extension. For example, int widths[] = { [0 ... 9] = 1, [10 ... 99] = 2, [100] = 3 }; If the value in it has side effects, the side effects happen only once, not for each initialized field by the range initializer. Note that the length of the array is the highest value specified plus one. In a structure initializer, specify the name of a field to initialize with '.fieldname =' before the element value. For example, given the following structure, struct point { int x, y; }; the following initialization struct point p = { .y = yvalue, .x = xvalue }; is equivalent to struct point p = { xvalue, yvalue }; Another syntax that has the same meaning, obsolete since GCC 2.5, is 'fieldname:', as shown here: struct point p = { y: yvalue, x: xvalue }; Omitted fields are implicitly initialized the same as for objects that have static storage duration. The '[index]' or '.fieldname' is known as a designator. You can also use a designator (or the obsolete colon syntax) when initializing a union, to specify which element of the union should be used. For example, union foo { int i; double d; }; union foo f = { .d = 4 }; converts 4 to a double to store it in the union using the second element. By contrast, casting 4 to type union foo stores it into the union as the integer i, since it is an integer. See Cast to Union. You can combine this technique of naming elements with ordinary C initialization of successive elements. Each initializer element that does not have a designator applies to the next consecutive element of the array or structure. For example, int a[6] = { [1] = v1, v2, [4] = v4 }; is equivalent to int a[6] = { 0, v1, v2, 0, v4, 0 }; Labeling the elements of an array initializer is especially useful when the indices are characters or belong to an enum type. For example: int whitespace[256] = { [' '] = 1, ['\t'] = 1, ['\h'] = 1, ['\f'] = 1, ['\n'] = 1, ['\r'] = 1 }; You can also write a series of '.fieldname' and '[index]' designators before an '=' to specify a nested subobject to initialize; the list is taken relative to the subobject corresponding to the closest surrounding brace pair. For example, with the 'struct point' declaration above: struct point ptarray[10] = { [2].y = yv2, [2].x = xv2, [0].x = xv0 }; If the same field is initialized multiple times, or overlapping fields of a union are initialized, the value from the last initialization is used. When a field of a union is itself a structure, the entire structure from the last field initialized is used. If any previous initializer has side effect, it is unspecified whether the side effect happens or not. Currently, GCC discards the side-effecting initializer expressions and issues a warning. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next: Case Ranges, Previous: Compound Literals, Up: C Extensions Link: start: Top Link: index: Option Index Link: contents: Table of Contents Link: up: C Extensions Link: next: Cast to Union Link: prev: Designated Inits Next: Cast to Union, Previous: Designated Inits, Up: C Extensions ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.30 Case Ranges You can specify a range of consecutive values in a single case label, like this: case low ... high: This has the same effect as the proper number of individual case labels, one for each integer value from low to high, inclusive. This feature is especially useful for ranges of ASCII character codes: case 'A' ... 'Z': Be careful: Write spaces around the ..., for otherwise it may be parsed wrong when you use it with integer values. For example, write this: case 1 ... 5: rather than this: case 1...5: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.31 Cast to a Union Type A cast to a union type is a C extension not available in C++. It looks just like ordinary casts with the constraint that the type specified is a union type. You can specify the type either with the union keyword or with a typedef name that refers to a union. The result of a cast to a union is a temporary rvalue of the union type with a member whose type matches that of the operand initialized to the value of the operand. The effect of a cast to a union is similar to a compound literal except that it yields an rvalue like standard casts do. See Compound Literals. Expressions that may be cast to the union type are those whose type matches at least one of the members of the union. Thus, given the following union and variables: union foo { int i; double d; }; int x; double y; union foo z; both x and y can be cast to type union foo and the following assignments z = (union foo) x; z = (union foo) y; are shorthand equivalents of these z = (union foo) { .i = x }; z = (union foo) { .d = y }; However, (union foo) FLT_MAX; is not a valid cast because the union has no member of type float. Using the cast as the right-hand side of an assignment to a variable of union type is equivalent to storing in a member of the union with the same type union foo u; /* … */ u = (union foo) x ≡ u.i = x u = (union foo) y ≡ u.d = y You can also use the union cast as a function argument: void hack (union foo); /* … */ hack ((union foo) x); ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.32 Mixed Declarations and Code ISO C99 and ISO C++ allow declarations and code to be freely mixed within compound statements. As an extension, GNU C also allows this in C90 mode. For example, you could do: int i; /* … */ i++; int j = i + 2; ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.33 Declaring Attributes of Functions In GNU C and C++, you can use function attributes to specify certain function properties that may help the compiler optimize calls or check code more carefully for correctness. For example, you can use attributes to specify that a function never returns (noreturn), returns a value depending only on the values of its arguments (const), or has printf-style arguments (format). You can also use attributes to control memory placement, code generation options or call/return conventions within the function being annotated. Many of these attributes are target-specific. For example, many targets support attributes for defining interrupt handler functions, which typically must follow special register usage and return conventions. Such attributes are described in the subsection for each target. However, a considerable number of attributes are supported by most, if not all targets. Those are described in the Common Function Attributes section. Function attributes are introduced by the __attribute__ keyword in the declaration of a function, followed by an attribute specification enclosed in double parentheses. You can specify multiple attributes in a declaration by separating them by commas within the double parentheses or by immediately following one attribute specification with another. See Attribute Syntax, for the exact rules on attribute syntax and placement. Compatible attribute specifications on distinct declarations of the same function are merged. An attribute specification that is not compatible with attributes already applied to a declaration of the same function is ignored with a warning. Some function attributes take one or more arguments that refer to the function's parameters by their positions within the function parameter list. Such attribute arguments are referred to as positional arguments. Unless specified otherwise, positional arguments that specify properties of parameters with pointer types can also specify the same properties of the implicit C++ this argument in non-static member functions, and of parameters of reference to a pointer type. For ordinary functions, position one refers to the first parameter on the list. In C++ non-static member functions, position one refers to the implicit this pointer. The same restrictions and effects apply to function attributes used with ordinary functions or C++ member functions. GCC also supports attributes on variable declarations (see Variable Attributes), labels (see Label Attributes), enumerators (see Enumerator Attributes), statements (see Statement Attributes), and types (see Type Attributes). There is some overlap between the purposes of attributes and pragmas (see Pragmas Accepted by GCC). It has been found convenient to use __attribute__ to achieve a natural attachment of attributes to their corresponding declarations, whereas #pragma is of use for compatibility with other compilers or constructs that do not naturally form part of the grammar. In addition to the attributes documented here, GCC plugins may provide their own attributes. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.33.1 Common Function Attributes The following attributes are supported on most targets. alias ("target") The alias attribute causes the declaration to be emitted as an alias for another symbol, which must be specified. For instance, void __f () { /* Do something. */; } void f () __attribute__ ((weak, alias ("__f"))); defines 'f' to be a weak alias for '__f'. In C++, the mangled name for the target must be used. It is an error if '__f' is not defined in the same translation unit. This attribute requires assembler and object file support, and may not be available on all targets. aligned aligned (alignment) The aligned attribute specifies a minimum alignment for the first instruction of the function, measured in bytes. When specified, alignment must be an integer constant power of 2. Specifying no alignment argument implies the ideal alignment for the target. The __alignof__ operator can be used to determine what that is (see Alignment). The attribute has no effect when a definition for the function is not provided in the same translation unit. The attribute cannot be used to decrease the alignment of a function previously declared with a more restrictive alignment; only to increase it. Attempts to do otherwise are diagnosed. Some targets specify a minimum default alignment for functions that is greater than 1. On such targets, specifying a less restrictive alignment is silently ignored. Using the attribute overrides the effect of the -falign-functions (see Optimize Options) option for this function. Note that the effectiveness of aligned attributes may be limited by inherent limitations in the system linker and/or object file format. On some systems, the linker is only able to arrange for functions to be aligned up to a certain maximum alignment. (For some linkers, the maximum supported alignment may be very very small.) See your linker documentation for further information. The aligned attribute can also be used for variables and fields (see Variable Attributes.) alloc_align (position) The alloc_align attribute may be applied to a function that returns a pointer and takes at least one argument of an integer or enumerated type. It indicates that the returned pointer is aligned on a boundary given by the function argument at position. Meaningful alignments are powers of 2 greater than one. GCC uses this information to improve pointer alignment analysis. The function parameter denoting the allocated alignment is specified by one constant integer argument whose number is the argument of the attribute. Argument numbering starts at one. For instance, void* my_memalign (size_t, size_t) __attribute__ ((alloc_align (1))); declares that my_memalign returns memory with minimum alignment given by parameter 1. alloc_size (position) alloc_size (position-1, position-2) The alloc_size attribute may be applied to a function that returns a pointer and takes at least one argument of an integer or enumerated type. It indicates that the returned pointer points to memory whose size is given by the function argument at position-1, or by the product of the arguments at position-1 and position-2. Meaningful sizes are positive values less than PTRDIFF_MAX. GCC uses this information to improve the results of __builtin_object_size. The function parameter(s) denoting the allocated size are specified by one or two integer arguments supplied to the attribute. The allocated size is either the value of the single function argument specified or the product of the two function arguments specified. Argument numbering starts at one for ordinary functions, and at two for C++ non-static member functions. For instance, void* my_calloc (size_t, size_t) __attribute__ ((alloc_size (1, 2))); void* my_realloc (void*, size_t) __attribute__ ((alloc_size (2))); declares that my_calloc returns memory of the size given by the product of parameter 1 and 2 and that my_realloc returns memory of the size given by parameter 2. always_inline Generally, functions are not inlined unless optimization is specified. For functions declared inline, this attribute inlines the function independent of any restrictions that otherwise apply to inlining. Failure to inline such a function is diagnosed as an error. Note that if such a function is called indirectly the compiler may or may not inline it depending on optimization level and a failure to inline an indirect call may or may not be diagnosed. artificial This attribute is useful for small inline wrappers that if possible should appear during debugging as a unit. Depending on the debug info format it either means marking the function as artificial or using the caller location for all instructions within the inlined body. assume_aligned (alignment) assume_aligned (alignment, offset) The assume_aligned attribute may be applied to a function that returns a pointer. It indicates that the returned pointer is aligned on a boundary given by alignment. If the attribute has two arguments, the second argument is misalignment offset. Meaningful values of alignment are powers of 2 greater than one. Meaningful values of offset are greater than zero and less than alignment. For instance void* my_alloc1 (size_t) __attribute__((assume_aligned (16))); void* my_alloc2 (size_t) __attribute__((assume_aligned (32, 8))); declares that my_alloc1 returns 16-byte aligned pointers and that my_alloc2 returns a pointer whose value modulo 32 is equal to 8. cold The cold attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that the function is unlikely to be executed. The function is optimized for size rather than speed and on many targets it is placed into a special subsection of the text section so all cold functions appear close together, improving code locality of non-cold parts of program. The paths leading to calls of cold functions within code are marked as unlikely by the branch prediction mechanism. It is thus useful to mark functions used to handle unlikely conditions, such as perror, as cold to improve optimization of hot functions that do call marked functions in rare occasions. When profile feedback is available, via -fprofile-use, cold functions are automatically detected and this attribute is ignored. const Calls to functions whose return value is not affected by changes to the observable state of the program and that have no observable effects on such state other than to return a value may lend themselves to optimizations such as common subexpression elimination. Declaring such functions with the const attribute allows GCC to avoid emitting some calls in repeated invocations of the function with the same argument values. For example, int square (int) __attribute__ ((const)); tells GCC that subsequent calls to function square with the same argument value can be replaced by the result of the first call regardless of the statements in between. The const attribute prohibits a function from reading objects that affect its return value between successive invocations. However, functions declared with the attribute can safely read objects that do not change their return value, such as non-volatile constants. The const attribute imposes greater restrictions on a function's definition than the similar pure attribute. Declaring the same function with both the const and the pure attribute is diagnosed. Because a const function cannot have any observable side effects it does not make sense for it to return void. Declaring such a function is diagnosed. Note that a function that has pointer arguments and examines the data pointed to must not be declared const if the pointed-to data might change between successive invocations of the function. In general, since a function cannot distinguish data that might change from data that cannot, const functions should never take pointer or, in C++, reference arguments. Likewise, a function that calls a non-const function usually must not be const itself. constructor destructor constructor (priority) destructor (priority) The constructor attribute causes the function to be called automatically before execution enters main (). Similarly, the destructor attribute causes the function to be called automatically after main () completes or exit () is called. Functions with these attributes are useful for initializing data that is used implicitly during the execution of the program. On some targets the attributes also accept an integer argument to specify a priority to control the order in which constructor and destructor functions are run. A constructor with a smaller priority number runs before a constructor with a larger priority number; the opposite relationship holds for destructors. So, if you have a constructor that allocates a resource and a destructor that deallocates the same resource, both functions typically have the same priority. The priorities for constructor and destructor functions are the same as those specified for namespace-scope C++ objects (see C++ Attributes). However, at present, the order in which constructors for C++ objects with static storage duration and functions decorated with attribute constructor are invoked is unspecified. In mixed declarations, attribute init_priority can be used to impose a specific ordering. Using the argument forms of the constructor and destructor attributes on targets where the feature is not supported is rejected with an error. copy copy (function) The copy attribute applies the set of attributes with which function has been declared to the declaration of the function to which the attribute is applied. The attribute is designed for libraries that define aliases or function resolvers that are expected to specify the same set of attributes as their targets. The copy attribute can be used with functions, variables, or types. However, the kind of symbol to which the attribute is applied (either function or variable) must match the kind of symbol to which the argument refers. The copy attribute copies only syntactic and semantic attributes but not attributes that affect a symbol's linkage or visibility such as alias, visibility, or weak. The deprecated attribute is also not copied. See Common Type Attributes. See Common Variable Attributes. For example, the StrongAlias macro below makes use of the alias and copy attributes to define an alias named alloc for function allocate declared with attributes alloc_size, malloc, and nothrow. Thanks to the __typeof__ operator the alias has the same type as the target function. As a result of the copy attribute the alias also shares the same attributes as the target. #define StrongAlias(TagetFunc, AliasDecl) \ extern __typeof__ (TargetFunc) AliasDecl \ __attribute__ ((alias (#TargetFunc), copy (TargetFunc))); extern __attribute__ ((alloc_size (1), malloc, nothrow)) void* allocate (size_t); StrongAlias (allocate, alloc); deprecated deprecated (msg) The deprecated attribute results in a warning if the function is used anywhere in the source file. This is useful when identifying functions that are expected to be removed in a future version of a program. The warning also includes the location of the declaration of the deprecated function, to enable users to easily find further information about why the function is deprecated, or what they should do instead. Note that the warnings only occurs for uses: int old_fn () __attribute__ ((deprecated)); int old_fn (); int (*fn_ptr)() = old_fn; results in a warning on line 3 but not line 2. The optional msg argument, which must be a string, is printed in the warning if present. The deprecated attribute can also be used for variables and types (see Variable Attributes, see Type Attributes.) The message attached to the attribute is affected by the setting of the -fmessage-length option. error ("message") warning ("message") If the error or warning attribute is used on a function declaration and a call to such a function is not eliminated through dead code elimination or other optimizations, an error or warning (respectively) that includes message is diagnosed. This is useful for compile-time checking, especially together with __builtin_constant_p and inline functions where checking the inline function arguments is not possible through extern char [(condition) ? 1 : -1]; tricks. While it is possible to leave the function undefined and thus invoke a link failure (to define the function with a message in .gnu.warning* section), when using these attributes the problem is diagnosed earlier and with exact location of the call even in presence of inline functions or when not emitting debugging information. externally_visible This attribute, attached to a global variable or function, nullifies the effect of the -fwhole-program command-line option, so the object remains visible outside the current compilation unit. If -fwhole-program is used together with -flto and gold is used as the linker plugin, externally_visible attributes are automatically added to functions (not variable yet due to a current gold issue) that are accessed outside of LTO objects according to resolution file produced by gold. For other linkers that cannot generate resolution file, explicit externally_visible attributes are still necessary. flatten Generally, inlining into a function is limited. For a function marked with this attribute, every call inside this function is inlined, if possible. Functions declared with attribute noinline and similar are not inlined. Whether the function itself is considered for inlining depends on its size and the current inlining parameters. format (archetype, string-index, first-to-check) The format attribute specifies that a function takes printf, scanf, strftime or strfmon style arguments that should be type-checked against a format string. For example, the declaration: extern int my_printf (void *my_object, const char *my_format, ...) __attribute__ ((format (printf, 2, 3))); causes the compiler to check the arguments in calls to my_printf for consistency with the printf style format string argument my_format. The parameter archetype determines how the format string is interpreted, and should be printf, scanf, strftime, gnu_printf, gnu_scanf, gnu_strftime or strfmon. (You can also use __printf__, __scanf__, __strftime__ or __strfmon__.) On MinGW targets, ms_printf, ms_scanf, and ms_strftime are also present. archetype values such as printf refer to the formats accepted by the system's C runtime library, while values prefixed with 'gnu_' always refer to the formats accepted by the GNU C Library. On Microsoft Windows targets, values prefixed with 'ms_' refer to the formats accepted by the msvcrt.dll library. The parameter string-index specifies which argument is the format string argument (starting from 1), while first-to-check is the number of the first argument to check against the format string. For functions where the arguments are not available to be checked (such as vprintf), specify the third parameter as zero. In this case the compiler only checks the format string for consistency. For strftime formats, the third parameter is required to be zero. Since non-static C++ methods have an implicit this argument, the arguments of such methods should be counted from two, not one, when giving values for string-index and first-to-check. In the example above, the format string (my_format) is the second argument of the function my_print, and the arguments to check start with the third argument, so the correct parameters for the format attribute are 2 and 3. The format attribute allows you to identify your own functions that take format strings as arguments, so that GCC can check the calls to these functions for errors. The compiler always (unless -ffreestanding or -fno-builtin is used) checks formats for the standard library functions printf, fprintf, sprintf, scanf, fscanf, sscanf, strftime, vprintf, vfprintf and vsprintf whenever such warnings are requested (using -Wformat), so there is no need to modify the header file stdio.h. In C99 mode, the functions snprintf, vsnprintf, vscanf, vfscanf and vsscanf are also checked. Except in strictly conforming C standard modes, the X/Open function strfmon is also checked as are printf_unlocked and fprintf_unlocked. See Options Controlling C Dialect. For Objective-C dialects, NSString (or __NSString__) is recognized in the same context. Declarations including these format attributes are parsed for correct syntax, however the result of checking of such format strings is not yet defined, and is not carried out by this version of the compiler. The target may also provide additional types of format checks. See Format Checks Specific to Particular Target Machines. format_arg (string-index) The format_arg attribute specifies that a function takes one or more format strings for a printf, scanf, strftime or strfmon style function and modifies it (for example, to translate it into another language), so the result can be passed to a printf, scanf, strftime or strfmon style function (with the remaining arguments to the format function the same as they would have been for the unmodified string). Multiple format_arg attributes may be applied to the same function, each designating a distinct parameter as a format string. For example, the declaration: extern char * my_dgettext (char *my_domain, const char *my_format) __attribute__ ((format_arg (2))); causes the compiler to check the arguments in calls to a printf, scanf, strftime or strfmon type function, whose format string argument is a call to the my_dgettext function, for consistency with the format string argument my_format. If the format_arg attribute had not been specified, all the compiler could tell in such calls to format functions would be that the format string argument is not constant; this would generate a warning when -Wformat-nonliteral is used, but the calls could not be checked without the attribute. In calls to a function declared with more than one format_arg attribute, each with a distinct argument value, the corresponding actual function arguments are checked against all format strings designated by the attributes. This capability is designed to support the GNU ngettext family of functions. The parameter string-index specifies which argument is the format string argument (starting from one). Since non-static C++ methods have an implicit this argument, the arguments of such methods should be counted from two. The format_arg attribute allows you to identify your own functions that modify format strings, so that GCC can check the calls to printf, scanf, strftime or strfmon type function whose operands are a call to one of your own function. The compiler always treats gettext, dgettext, and dcgettext in this manner except when strict ISO C support is requested by -ansi or an appropriate -std option, or -ffreestanding or -fno-builtin is used. See Options Controlling C Dialect. For Objective-C dialects, the format-arg attribute may refer to an NSString reference for compatibility with the format attribute above. The target may also allow additional types in format-arg attributes. See Format Checks Specific to Particular Target Machines. gnu_inline This attribute should be used with a function that is also declared with the inline keyword. It directs GCC to treat the function as if it were defined in gnu90 mode even when compiling in C99 or gnu99 mode. If the function is declared extern, then this definition of the function is used only for inlining. In no case is the function compiled as a standalone function, not even if you take its address explicitly. Such an address becomes an external reference, as if you had only declared the function, and had not defined it. This has almost the effect of a macro. The way to use this is to put a function definition in a header file with this attribute, and put another copy of the function, without extern, in a library file. The definition in the header file causes most calls to the function to be inlined. If any uses of the function remain, they refer to the single copy in the library. Note that the two definitions of the functions need not be precisely the same, although if they do not have the same effect your program may behave oddly. In C, if the function is neither extern nor static, then the function is compiled as a standalone function, as well as being inlined where possible. This is how GCC traditionally handled functions declared inline. Since ISO C99 specifies a different semantics for inline, this function attribute is provided as a transition measure and as a useful feature in its own right. This attribute is available in GCC 4.1.3 and later. It is available if either of the preprocessor macros __GNUC_GNU_INLINE__ or __GNUC_STDC_INLINE__ are defined. See An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro. In C++, this attribute does not depend on extern in any way, but it still requires the inline keyword to enable its special behavior. hot The hot attribute on a function is used to inform the compiler that the function is a hot spot of the compiled program. The function is optimized more aggressively and on many targets it is placed into a special subsection of the text section so all hot functions appear close together, improving locality. When profile feedback is available, via -fprofile-use, hot functions are automatically detected and this attribute is ignored. ifunc ("resolver") The ifunc attribute is used to mark a function as an indirect function using the STT_GNU_IFUNC symbol type extension to the ELF standard. This allows the resolution of the symbol value to be determined dynamically at load time, and an optimized version of the routine to be selected for the particular processor or other system characteristics determined then. To use this attribute, first define the implementation functions available, and a resolver function that returns a pointer to the selected implementation function. The implementation functions' declarations must match the API of the function being implemented. The resolver should be declared to be a function taking no arguments and returning a pointer to a function of the same type as the implementation. For example: void *my_memcpy (void *dst, const void *src, size_t len) { … return dst; } static void * (*resolve_memcpy (void))(void *, const void *, size_t) { return my_memcpy; // we will just always select this routine } The exported header file declaring the function the user calls would contain: extern void *memcpy (void *, const void *, size_t); allowing the user to call memcpy as a regular function, unaware of the actual implementation. Finally, the indirect function needs to be defined in the same translation unit as the resolver function: void *memcpy (void *, const void *, size_t) __attribute__ ((ifunc ("resolve_memcpy"))); In C++, the ifunc attribute takes a string that is the mangled name of the resolver function. A C++ resolver for a non-static member function of class C should be declared to return a pointer to a non-member function taking pointer to C as the first argument, followed by the same arguments as of the implementation function. G++ checks the signatures of the two functions and issues a -Wattribute-alias warning for mismatches. To suppress a warning for the necessary cast from a pointer to the implementation member function to the type of the corresponding non-member function use the -Wno-pmf-conversions option. For example: class S { private: int debug_impl (int); int optimized_impl (int); typedef int Func (S*, int); static Func* resolver (); public: int interface (int); }; int S::debug_impl (int) { /* … */ } int S::optimized_impl (int) { /* … */ } S::Func* S::resolver () { int (S::*pimpl) (int) = getenv ("DEBUG") ? &S::debug_impl : &S::optimized_impl; // Cast triggers -Wno-pmf-conversions. return reinterpret_cast(pimpl); } int S::interface (int) __attribute__ ((ifunc ("_ZN1S8resolverEv"))); Indirect functions cannot be weak. Binutils version 2.20.1 or higher and GNU C Library version 2.11.1 are required to use this feature. interrupt interrupt_handler Many GCC back ends support attributes to indicate that a function is an interrupt handler, which tells the compiler to generate function entry and exit sequences that differ from those from regular functions. The exact syntax and behavior are target-specific; refer to the following subsections for details. leaf Calls to external functions with this attribute must return to the current compilation unit only by return or by exception handling. In particular, a leaf function is not allowed to invoke callback functions passed to it from the current compilation unit, directly call functions exported by the unit, or longjmp into the unit. Leaf functions might still call functions from other compilation units and thus they are not necessarily leaf in the sense that they contain no function calls at all. The attribute is intended for library functions to improve dataflow analysis. The compiler takes the hint that any data not escaping the current compilation unit cannot be used or modified by the leaf function. For example, the sin function is a leaf function, but qsort is not. Note that leaf functions might indirectly run a signal handler defined in the current compilation unit that uses static variables. Similarly, when lazy symbol resolution is in effect, leaf functions might invoke indirect functions whose resolver function or implementation function is defined in the current compilation unit and uses static variables. There is no standard-compliant way to write such a signal handler, resolver function, or implementation function, and the best that you can do is to remove the leaf attribute or mark all such static variables volatile. Lastly, for ELF-based systems that support symbol interposition, care should be taken that functions defined in the current compilation unit do not unexpectedly interpose other symbols based on the defined standards mode and defined feature test macros; otherwise an inadvertent callback would be added. The attribute has no effect on functions defined within the current compilation unit. This is to allow easy merging of multiple compilation units into one, for example, by using the link-time optimization. For this reason the attribute is not allowed on types to annotate indirect calls. malloc This tells the compiler that a function is malloc-like, i.e., that the pointer P returned by the function cannot alias any other pointer valid when the function returns, and moreover no pointers to valid objects occur in any storage addressed by P. Using this attribute can improve optimization. Compiler predicts that a function with the attribute returns non-null in most cases. Functions like malloc and calloc have this property because they return a pointer to uninitialized or zeroed-out storage. However, functions like realloc do not have this property, as they can return a pointer to storage containing pointers. no_icf This function attribute prevents a functions from being merged with another semantically equivalent function. no_instrument_function If any of -finstrument-functions, -p, or -pg are given, profiling function calls are generated at entry and exit of most user-compiled functions. Functions with this attribute are not so instrumented. no_profile_instrument_function The no_profile_instrument_function attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that it should not process any profile feedback based optimization code instrumentation. no_reorder Do not reorder functions or variables marked no_reorder against each other or top level assembler statements the executable. The actual order in the program will depend on the linker command line. Static variables marked like this are also not removed. This has a similar effect as the -fno-toplevel-reorder option, but only applies to the marked symbols. no_sanitize ("sanitize_option") The no_sanitize attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that it should not do sanitization of all options mentioned in sanitize_option. A list of values acceptable by -fsanitize option can be provided. void __attribute__ ((no_sanitize ("alignment", "object-size"))) f () { /* Do something. */; } void __attribute__ ((no_sanitize ("alignment,object-size"))) g () { /* Do something. */; } no_sanitize_address no_address_safety_analysis The no_sanitize_address attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that it should not instrument memory accesses in the function when compiling with the -fsanitize=address option. The no_address_safety_analysis is a deprecated alias of the no_sanitize_address attribute, new code should use no_sanitize_address. no_sanitize_thread The no_sanitize_thread attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that it should not instrument memory accesses in the function when compiling with the -fsanitize=thread option. no_sanitize_undefined The no_sanitize_undefined attribute on functions is used to inform the compiler that it should not check for undefined behavior in the function when compiling with the -fsanitize=undefined option. no_split_stack If -fsplit-stack is given, functions have a small prologue which decides whether to split the stack. Functions with the no_split_stack attribute do not have that prologue, and thus may run with only a small amount of stack space available. no_stack_limit This attribute locally overrides the -fstack-limit-register and -fstack-limit-symbol command-line options; it has the effect of disabling stack limit checking in the function it applies to. noclone This function attribute prevents a function from being considered for cloning—a mechanism that produces specialized copies of functions and which is (currently) performed by interprocedural constant propagation. noinline This function attribute prevents a function from being considered for inlining. If the function does not have side effects, there are optimizations other than inlining that cause function calls to be optimized away, although the function call is live. To keep such calls from being optimized away, put asm (""); (see Extended Asm) in the called function, to serve as a special side effect. noipa Disable interprocedural optimizations between the function with this attribute and its callers, as if the body of the function is not available when optimizing callers and the callers are unavailable when optimizing the body. This attribute implies noinline, noclone and no_icf attributes. However, this attribute is not equivalent to a combination of other attributes, because its purpose is to suppress existing and future optimizations employing interprocedural analysis, including those that do not have an attribute suitable for disabling them individually. This attribute is supported mainly for the purpose of testing the compiler. nonnull nonnull (arg-index, …) The nonnull attribute may be applied to a function that takes at least one argument of a pointer type. It indicates that the referenced arguments must be non-null pointers. For instance, the declaration: extern void * my_memcpy (void *dest, const void *src, size_t len) __attribute__((nonnull (1, 2))); causes the compiler to check that, in calls to my_memcpy, arguments dest and src are non-null. If the compiler determines that a null pointer is passed in an argument slot marked as non-null, and the -Wnonnull option is enabled, a warning is issued. See Warning Options. Unless disabled by the -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks option the compiler may also perform optimizations based on the knowledge that certain function arguments cannot be null. In addition, the -fisolate-erroneous-paths-attribute option can be specified to have GCC transform calls with null arguments to non-null functions into traps. See Optimize Options. If no arg-index is given to the nonnull attribute, all pointer arguments are marked as non-null. To illustrate, the following declaration is equivalent to the previous example: extern void * my_memcpy (void *dest, const void *src, size_t len) __attribute__((nonnull)); noplt The noplt attribute is the counterpart to option -fno-plt. Calls to functions marked with this attribute in position-independent code do not use the PLT. /* Externally defined function foo. */ int foo () __attribute__ ((noplt)); int main (/* … */) { /* … */ foo (); /* … */ } The noplt attribute on function foo tells the compiler to assume that the function foo is externally defined and that the call to foo must avoid the PLT in position-independent code. In position-dependent code, a few targets also convert calls to functions that are marked to not use the PLT to use the GOT instead. noreturn A few standard library functions, such as abort and exit, cannot return. GCC knows this automatically. Some programs define their own functions that never return. You can declare them noreturn to tell the compiler this fact. For example, void fatal () __attribute__ ((noreturn)); void fatal (/* … */) { /* … */ /* Print error message. */ /* … */ exit (1); } The noreturn keyword tells the compiler to assume that fatal cannot return. It can then optimize without regard to what would happen if fatal ever did return. This makes slightly better code. More importantly, it helps avoid spurious warnings of uninitialized variables. The noreturn keyword does not affect the exceptional path when that applies: a noreturn-marked function may still return to the caller by throwing an exception or calling longjmp. In order to preserve backtraces, GCC will never turn calls to noreturn functions into tail calls. Do not assume that registers saved by the calling function are restored before calling the noreturn function. It does not make sense for a noreturn function to have a return type other than void. nothrow The nothrow attribute is used to inform the compiler that a function cannot throw an exception. For example, most functions in the standard C library can be guaranteed not to throw an exception with the notable exceptions of qsort and bsearch that take function pointer arguments. optimize (level, …) optimize (string, …) The optimize attribute is used to specify that a function is to be compiled with different optimization options than specified on the command line. Valid arguments are constant non-negative integers and strings. Each numeric argument specifies an optimization level. Each string argument consists of one or more comma-separated substrings. Each substring that begins with the letter O refers to an optimization option such as -O0 or -Os. Other substrings are taken as suffixes to the -f prefix jointly forming the name of an optimization option. See Optimize Options. '#pragma GCC optimize' can be used to set optimization options for more than one function. See Function Specific Option Pragmas, for details about the pragma. Providing multiple strings as arguments separated by commas to specify multiple options is equivalent to separating the option suffixes with a comma (',') within a single string. Spaces are not permitted within the strings. Not every optimization option that starts with the -f prefix specified by the attribute necessarily has an effect on the function. The optimize attribute should be used for debugging purposes only. It is not suitable in production code. patchable_function_entry In case the target's text segment can be made writable at run time by any means, padding the function entry with a number of NOPs can be used to provide a universal tool for instrumentation. The patchable_function_entry function attribute can be used to change the number of NOPs to any desired value. The two-value syntax is the same as for the command-line switch -fpatchable-function-entry=N,M, generating N NOPs, with the function entry point before the Mth NOP instruction. M defaults to 0 if omitted e.g. function entry point is before the first NOP. If patchable function entries are enabled globally using the command-line option -fpatchable-function-entry=N,M, then you must disable instrumentation on all functions that are part of the instrumentation framework with the attribute patchable_function_entry (0) to prevent recursion. pure Calls to functions that have no observable effects on the state of the program other than to return a value may lend themselves to optimizations such as common subexpression elimination. Declaring such functions with the pure attribute allows GCC to avoid emitting some calls in repeated invocations of the function with the same argument values. The pure attribute prohibits a function from modifying the state of the program that is observable by means other than inspecting the function's return value. However, functions declared with the pure attribute can safely read any non-volatile objects, and modify the value of objects in a way that does not affect their return value or the observable state of the program. For example, int hash (char *) __attribute__ ((pure)); tells GCC that subsequent calls to the function hash with the same string can be replaced by the result of the first call provided the state of the program observable by hash, including the contents of the array itself, does not change in between. Even though hash takes a non-const pointer argument it must not modify the array it points to, or any other object whose value the rest of the program may depend on. However, the caller may safely change the contents of the array between successive calls to the function (doing so disables the optimization). The restriction also applies to member objects referenced by the this pointer in C++ non-static member functions. Some common examples of pure functions are strlen or memcmp. Interesting non-pure functions are functions with infinite loops or those depending on volatile memory or other system resource, that may change between consecutive calls (such as the standard C feof function in a multithreading environment). The pure attribute imposes similar but looser restrictions on a function's definition than the const attribute: pure allows the function to read any non-volatile memory, even if it changes in between successive invocations of the function. Declaring the same function with both the pure and the const attribute is diagnosed. Because a pure function cannot have any observable side effects it does not make sense for such a function to return void. Declaring such a function is diagnosed. returns_nonnull The returns_nonnull attribute specifies that the function return value should be a non-null pointer. For instance, the declaration: extern void * mymalloc (size_t len) __attribute__((returns_nonnull)); lets the compiler optimize callers based on the knowledge that the return value will never be null. returns_twice The returns_twice attribute tells the compiler that a function may return more than one time. The compiler ensures that all registers are dead before calling such a function and emits a warning about the variables that may be clobbered after the second return from the function. Examples of such functions are setjmp and vfork. The longjmp-like counterpart of such function, if any, might need to be marked with the noreturn attribute. section ("section-name") Normally, the compiler places the code it generates in the text section. Sometimes, however, you need additional sections, or you need certain particular functions to appear in special sections. The section attribute specifies that a function lives in a particular section. For example, the declaration: extern void foobar (void) __attribute__ ((section ("bar"))); puts the function foobar in the bar section. Some file formats do not support arbitrary sections so the section attribute is not available on all platforms. If you need to map the entire contents of a module to a particular section, consider using the facilities of the linker instead. sentinel sentinel (position) This function attribute indicates that an argument in a call to the function is expected to be an explicit NULL. The attribute is only valid on variadic functions. By default, the sentinel is expected to be the last argument of the function call. If the optional position argument is specified to the attribute, the sentinel must be located at position counting backwards from the end of the argument list. __attribute__ ((sentinel)) is equivalent to __attribute__ ((sentinel(0))) The attribute is automatically set with a position of 0 for the built-in functions execl and execlp. The built-in function execle has the attribute set with a position of 1. A valid NULL in this context is defined as zero with any object pointer type. If your system defines the NULL macro with an integer type then you need to add an explicit cast. During installation GCC replaces the system header with a copy that redefines NULL appropriately. The warnings for missing or incorrect sentinels are enabled with -Wformat. simd simd("mask") This attribute enables creation of one or more function versions that can process multiple arguments using SIMD instructions from a single invocation. Specifying this attribute allows compiler to assume that such versions are available at link time (provided in the same or another translation unit). Generated versions are target-dependent and described in the corresponding Vector ABI document. For x86_64 target this document can be found here. The optional argument mask may have the value notinbranch or inbranch, and instructs the compiler to generate non-masked or masked clones correspondingly. By default, all clones are generated. If the attribute is specified and #pragma omp declare simd is present on a declaration and the -fopenmp or -fopenmp-simd switch is specified, then the attribute is ignored. stack_protect This attribute adds stack protection code to the function if flags -fstack-protector, -fstack-protector-strong or -fstack-protector-explicit are set. target (string, …) Multiple target back ends implement the target attribute to specify that a function is to be compiled with different target options than specified on the command line. One or more strings can be provided as arguments. Each string consists of one or more comma-separated suffixes to the -m prefix jointly forming the name of a machine-dependent option. See Machine-Dependent Options. The target attribute can be used for instance to have a function compiled with a different ISA (instruction set architecture) than the default. '#pragma GCC target' can be used to specify target-specific options for more than one function. See Function Specific Option Pragmas, for details about the pragma. For instance, on an x86, you could declare one function with the target("sse4.1,arch=core2") attribute and another with target("sse4a,arch=amdfam10"). This is equivalent to compiling the first function with -msse4.1 and -march=core2 options, and the second function with -msse4a and -march=amdfam10 options. It is up to you to make sure that a function is only invoked on a machine that supports the particular ISA it is compiled for (for example by using cpuid on x86 to determine what feature bits and architecture family are used). int core2_func (void) __attribute__ ((__target__ ("arch=core2"))); int sse3_func (void) __attribute__ ((__target__ ("sse3"))); Providing multiple strings as arguments separated by commas to specify multiple options is equivalent to separating the option suffixes with a comma (',') within a single string. Spaces are not permitted within the strings. The options supported are specific to each target; refer to x86 Function Attributes, PowerPC Function Attributes, ARM Function Attributes, AArch64 Function Attributes, Nios II Function Attributes, and S/390 Function Attributes for details. target_clones (options) The target_clones attribute is used to specify that a function be cloned into multiple versions compiled with different target options than specified on the command line. The supported options and restrictions are the same as for target attribute. For instance, on an x86, you could compile a function with target_clones("sse4.1,avx"). GCC creates two function clones, one compiled with -msse4.1 and another with -mavx. On a PowerPC, you can compile a function with target_clones("cpu=power9,default"). GCC will create two function clones, one compiled with -mcpu=power9 and another with the default options. GCC must be configured to use GLIBC 2.23 or newer in order to use the target_clones attribute. It also creates a resolver function (see the ifunc attribute above) that dynamically selects a clone suitable for current architecture. The resolver is created only if there is a usage of a function with target_clones attribute. unused This attribute, attached to a function, means that the function is meant to be possibly unused. GCC does not produce a warning for this function. used This attribute, attached to a function, means that code must be emitted for the function even if it appears that the function is not referenced. This is useful, for example, when the function is referenced only in inline assembly. When applied to a member function of a C++ class template, the attribute also means that the function is instantiated if the class itself is instantiated. visibility ("visibility_type") This attribute affects the linkage of the declaration to which it is attached. It can be applied to variables (see Common Variable Attributes) and types (see Common Type Attributes) as well as functions. There are four supported visibility_type values: default, hidden, protected or internal visibility. void __attribute__ ((visibility ("protected"))) f () { /* Do something. */; } int i __attribute__ ((visibility ("hidden"))); The possible values of visibility_type correspond to the visibility settings in the ELF gABI. default Default visibility is the normal case for the object file format. This value is available for the visibility attribute to override other options that may change the assumed visibility of entities. On ELF, default visibility means that the declaration is visible to other modules and, in shared libraries, means that the declared entity may be overridden. On Darwin, default visibility means that the declaration is visible to other modules. Default visibility corresponds to “external linkage” in the language. hidden Hidden visibility indicates that the entity declared has a new form of linkage, which we call “hidden linkage”. Two declarations of an object with hidden linkage refer to the same object if they are in the same shared object. internal Internal visibility is like hidden visibility, but with additional processor specific semantics. Unless otherwise specified by the psABI, GCC defines internal visibility to mean that a function is never called from another module. Compare this with hidden functions which, while they cannot be referenced directly by other modules, can be referenced indirectly via function pointers. By indicating that a function cannot be called from outside the module, GCC may for instance omit the load of a PIC register since it is known that the calling function loaded the correct value. protected Protected visibility is like default visibility except that it indicates that references within the defining module bind to the definition in that module. That is, the declared entity cannot be overridden by another module. All visibilities are supported on many, but not all, ELF targets (supported when the assembler supports the '.visibility' pseudo-op). Default visibility is supported everywhere. Hidden visibility is supported on Darwin targets. The visibility attribute should be applied only to declarations that would otherwise have external linkage. The attribute should be applied consistently, so that the same entity should not be declared with different settings of the attribute. In C++, the visibility attribute applies to types as well as functions and objects, because in C++ types have linkage. A class must not have greater visibility than its non-static data member types and bases, and class members default to the visibility of their class. Also, a declaration without explicit visibility is limited to the visibility of its type. In C++, you can mark member functions and static member variables of a class with the visibility attribute. This is useful if you know a particular method or static member variable should only be used from one shared object; then you can mark it hidden while the rest of the class has default visibility. Care must be taken to avoid breaking the One Definition Rule; for example, it is usually not useful to mark an inline method as hidden without marking the whole class as hidden. A C++ namespace declaration can also have the visibility attribute. namespace nspace1 __attribute__ ((visibility ("protected"))) { /* Do something. */; } This attribute applies only to the particular namespace body, not to other definitions of the same namespace; it is equivalent to using '#pragma GCC visibility' before and after the namespace definition (see Visibility Pragmas). In C++, if a template argument has limited visibility, this restriction is implicitly propagated to the template instantiation. Otherwise, template instantiations and specializations default to the visibility of their template. If both the template and enclosing class have explicit visibility, the visibility from the template is used. warn_unused_result The warn_unused_result attribute causes a warning to be emitted if a caller of the function with this attribute does not use its return value. This is useful for functions where not checking the result is either a security problem or always a bug, such as realloc. int fn () __attribute__ ((warn_unused_result)); int foo () { if (fn () < 0) return -1; fn (); return 0; } results in warning on line 5. weak The weak attribute causes the declaration to be emitted as a weak symbol rather than a global. This is primarily useful in defining library functions that can be overridden in user code, though it can also be used with non-function declarations. Weak symbols are supported for ELF targets, and also for a.out targets when using the GNU assembler and linker. weakref weakref ("target") The weakref attribute marks a declaration as a weak reference. Without arguments, it should be accompanied by an alias attribute naming the target symbol. Optionally, the target may be given as an argument to weakref itself. In either case, weakref implicitly marks the declaration as weak. Without a target, given as an argument to weakref or to alias, we