GCC

GCC, short for the GNU Compiler Collection, is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project. It provides front ends for multiple programming languages, including C, C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, with more languages available through contributed projects. The project began in 1987 as the GNU C Compiler (GCC) created by Richard Stallman and was subsequently expanded into a collection of compilers; the name GCC remains even though it supports many languages. GCC is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License with the GCC Runtime Library Exception, and is maintained by the GCC development community under the auspices of the Free Software Foundation.

Architecturally, GCC is modular: a language-specific front end translates source code into a common intermediate representation, the middle end performs optimizations and analysis, and one or more back ends generate machine code for a wide range of target architectures, including x86, x86-64, ARM, AArch64, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, and RISC-V. It supports various optimization levels, link-time optimization, and cross-compilation, making it suitable for large-scale systems development and embedded projects. The standard library for C++ (libstdc++) and the runtime support library (libgcc) are typically used in conjunction with GCC.

It is the default compiler on many Linux distributions and is widely used across platforms. It is also available on Windows via MinGW-w64 and Cygwin and on macOS through various package managers. GCC remains a central tool in free software development and in many industry workflows, reflecting its long-standing role in compiling and optimizing code for diverse architectures.