Default C Compiler For Os X

If you're like me, you find working on the provided Ubuntu VM to be tortuous and inefficient. It's such a shame to be running an operating system with all of the tools to you need to compile and run simple toy C programs but being forced to use a clunky virtual machine without all your favourite software. Here's what I do to ease the pain.

Mac OS X

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/. Online C Compiler. Code, Compile, Run and Debug C program online. Write your code in this editor and press 'Run' button to compile and execute it. So the short answer is that clang is the best compiler on Mac OS X, as well as being the official one. GCC has been usable on OS X in the past, but support has been dying off steadily. It's quite difficult to use GCC on the Mac anymore due to binary incompatibilities with the default system libraries. Catalina is a C compiler plus a set of C libraries and device drivers for use with the Parallax Propeller microcontroller. Catalina is a cross-compiler based on the retargetable C compiler 'lcc'. Catalina runs on Windows or Linux. Out of the box, OS X doesn’t include the standard C compilers. While they are unnecessary for the average customer, many technical users like to have access to a C compiler on the command line.

By default the compiler tools build images using the new two-level namespace binding semantics, which has important consequences for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.0 (see below for more information). New Features. The following new features have been added to the Compiler Tools for the Mac OS X.

This guide was tested on Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, but should also work on any version of OS X that Homebrew supports. It should work just fine on Mavericks, plus you get access to valgrind. (valgrind hasn't been ported to 10.10 yet, but it does work on 10.9)

gcc on OS X

By default, if you have Xcode installed, typing gcc into Terminal.app links to the llvm/clang compiler. Although clang is a great, modern compiler it isn't what's specified by the professor and could potentially lead to incompatible code (and lost marks). To avoid this, we can install and run the same (*a slightly newer) version of gcc natively on our Macs.

Homebrew

If you don't already have Homebrew installed, go ahead and do that now. For those of you familiar with Linux package managers, Homebrew is essentially Aptitude (apt-get) for OS X.

From brew.sh:

The installer will guide you through installing any missing dependencies you may have. (Commonly Xcode tools)

Once Homebrew is installed,brew install gcc

And that's pretty much it. But you have to watch out; gcc is actually just clang plus some extra libraries, you need to run gcc-4.9 instead.

Notice how gcc -v spits out something like

Which, clearly, isn't what we want. Notice the slight difference between clang -v and gcc -v.

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Whereas gcc-4.9 -v should show something like

Note: if gcc-4.9 isn't being found, try opening a new shell. The $PATH sources need to be refreshed.

It's probably a bad idea to alias gcc to gcc-4.9 because some programs (Homebrew included) may expect clang. Instead, I suggest using Makefiles to easily specify your compiler.

Default C Compiler For Os X 10

ALWAYS test your code in the provided VM before submitting! You have been warned.

Using llvm/clang

Another option is just to use what's included with your system. llvm/clang is a very capable, modern compiler and can, for the most part, compile the exact same code that works in gcc, at least in the scope of COMP 2401.

Caveats

Default C Compiler For Os X Download

gcc (clang) appears to compile everything as C++ code, so you'll probably get some weird warnings that you otherwise wouldn't have seen. Fortunately, I've found that fixing things for clang tends to keep gcc-4.9 happy.