Bootstrappable TCC/TinyCC -- Tiny C Compiler's bootstrappable fork ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bootstrappable TCC is a fork from mainline TCC development, that started spring 2017 from commit 307b7b183d4ee56e74090b0e525d6a587840e31f Author: Aron BARATH Date: Tue May 16 07:03:26 2017 +0200 the R_X86_64_GOTOFF64 relocation was missing and can be compiled by MesCC (https://gnu.org/s/mes). Initially the plan was to make TinyCC itself "bootstrappable" (https://bootstrappable.org). The best way to do so would be to gradually simplify the implementation of TinyCC by restricting the use of language constructs to a well-defined subset of C. In bootstrapping each stage or compiler adds functionality; a compiler that is written in itself --a so-called `self-hosting' compiler--is not considered to be bootstrappable. At the time this vision was not received with much enthousiasm https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/tinycc-devel/2017-09/msg00019.html so I decided to fork TinyCC and instead grow MesCC (a bootstrappable sub-C compiler in a subset of Guile Scheme) into a full C99 compiler. Currently, the Reduced Binary Seed Bootstrap of the GNU Guix System (https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-reduces-bootstrap-seed-by-50/) uses bootstrappable-tinycc. The fork consists of about 12 patches cee58e0 build: Support building from bootstrap-mes. 39de356 bootstrappable: Force static link. 2b6271d bootstrappable: Work around MesCC bug. 379c62d bootstrappable: add tcc.h include guards to include location. 274bd06 bootstrappable: Handle libtcc1.a. 6ae9aa4 bootstrappable: Skip tidy_section_headers. a130ce1 bootstrappable: HAVE_FLOAT. de906df bootstrappable: HAVE_BITFIELD. 540ba0b bootstrappable: HAVE_LONG_LONG. 306f677 bootstrappable: Work around Nyacc-0.80.42 bug. 9c97705 build: bootstrap build scripts. 584478f bootstrappable: Remove non-free grep test. that work around bugs and missing C language features in MesCC. Only three of these are really interesting: the HAVE_* patches that allow for stepwise introduction of bitfields, doubles/floats and long longs. In time, I hope we can remove the need for this fork; either by upstreaming some bootstrappable work or else by maturing MesCC. At the time of writing, mainline (non-bootstrappable) tinycc lives here https://repo.or.cz/tinycc.git https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/tinycc-devel -- janneke Tiny C Compiler - C Scripting Everywhere - The Smallest ANSI C compiler ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Features: -------- - SMALL! You can compile and execute C code everywhere, for example on rescue disks. - FAST! tcc generates optimized x86 code. No byte code overhead. Compile, assemble and link about 7 times faster than 'gcc -O0'. - 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 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. Documentation: ------------- 1) Installation on a i386/x86_64/arm Linux/OSX/FreeBSD host ./configure make make test make install Notes: For OSX and FreeBSD, gmake should be used instead of make. For Windows read tcc-win32.txt. makeinfo must be installed to compile the doc. By default, tcc is installed in /usr/local/bin. ./configure --help shows configuration options. 2) Introduction We assume here that you know ANSI C. Look at the example ex1.c to know what the programs look like. The include file can be used if you want a small basic libc include support (especially useful for floppy disks). Of course, you can also use standard headers, although they are slower to compile. You can begin your C script with '#!/usr/local/bin/tcc -run' on the first line and set its execute bits (chmod a+x your_script). Then, you can launch the C code as a shell or perl script :-) The command line arguments are put in 'argc' and 'argv' of the main functions, as in ANSI C. 3) Examples ex1.c: simplest example (hello world). Can also be launched directly as a script: './ex1.c'. ex2.c: more complicated example: find a number with the four operations given a list of numbers (benchmark). ex3.c: compute fibonacci numbers (benchmark). ex4.c: more complicated: X11 program. Very complicated test in fact because standard headers are being used ! As for ex1.c, can also be launched directly as a script: './ex4.c'. ex5.c: 'hello world' with standard glibc headers. tcc.c: TCC can of course compile itself. Used to check the code generator. tcctest.c: auto test for TCC which tests many subtle possible bugs. Used when doing 'make test'. 4) Full Documentation Please read tcc-doc.html to have all the features of TCC. Additional information is available for the Windows port in tcc-win32.txt. License: ------- TCC is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (see COPYING file). Fabrice Bellard.