Tiny C Compiler 0.9.23 review

Tiny C compiles so fast that even for big projects Makefiles may not be necessary

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 413K Developer: Fabrice Bellard

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Tiny C compiles so fast that even for big projects Makefiles may not be necessary.

TinyCC (aka TCC) is a small but hyper fast C compiler. Unlike other C compilers, it is meant to be self-relying: you do not need an external assembler or linker because TCC does that for you.

TCC not only supports ANSI C, but also most of the new ISO C99 standard and many GNUC extensions including inline assembly.

TCC can also be used to make C scripts, i.e. pieces of C source that you run as a Perl or Python script. Compilation is so fast that your script will be as fast as if it was an executable. TCC can also automatically generate memory and bound checks while allowing all C pointers operations. TCC can do these checks even if non patched libraries are used.

With libtcc, you can use TCC as a backend for dynamic code generation

TCC mainly supports the i386 target on Linux and Windows. There are alpha ports for the ARM (arm-tcc) and the TMS320C67xx targets (c67-tcc).

Here are some key features of "Tiny C Compiler":
SMALL! You can compile and execute C code everywhere, for example on rescue disks (about 100KB for x86 TCC executable, including C preprocessor, C compiler, assembler and linker).
FAST! tcc generates optimized x86 code. No byte code overhead. Compile, assemble and link several times faster than GCC.
UNLIMITED! Any C dynamic library can be used directly. TCC is heading torward full ISOC99 compliance. TCC can of course compile itself.
SAFE! tcc includes an optional memory and bound checker. Bound checked code can be mixed freely with standard code.
Compile and execute C source directly. No linking or assembly necessary. Full C preprocessor and GNU-like assembler included.
C script supported : just add '#!/usr/local/bin/tcc -run' at the first line of your C source, and execute it directly from the command line.
With libtcc, you can use TCC as a backend for dynamic code generation.

What's New in This Release:
initial PE executable format for windows version (grischka)
'#pragma pack' support (grischka)
'#include_next' support (Bernhard Fischer)
ignore '-pipe' option
added -f[no-]leading-underscore
preprocessor function macro parsing fix (grischka)