C Program Compilation Process

refer to for more details:

https://medium.com/@earthtojhuang/gcc-main-c-9f6ee2e6894b

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/compiling-a-c-program-behind-the-scenes/

Compiling, linking, loading:

• Preprocessor takes C source code (ASCII text), expands #include etc, produces C source code
• Compiler takes C source code (ASCII text), produces assembly language (also ASCII text)
• Assembler takes assembly language (ASCII text), produces .o file (binary, machine-readable!)
• Linker takes multiple '.o's, produces a single program image (binary)
• Loader loads the program image into memory at run-time and starts it executing

// tst.c

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
        printf("hello world\n");
}

$ gcc -S tst.c  # the output is tst.s

$ gcc -c tst.c  # the output is tst.o

$ file tst.*
tst.c: C source, ASCII text
tst.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
tst.s: assembler source, ASCII text

gcc -S  --> Compile but don't assemble
gcc -c  --> Preprocess, compile, and assemble, but don't link

disassembly/反汇编

objdump -S a.out > tst.asm