TCC : Tiny C Compiler

TCC : Tiny C Compiler

Tiny C Compiler

News

[Note: I am no longer working on TCC. Check the mailing list to get up to date information.]

(May 20, 2009) TCC version 0.9.25 is out thanks to Grischka (Changelog). TCC version 0.9.25 is the first that supports the x86-64 target. Thanks to Shinichiro Hamaji for this.

(Apr 1, 2008) TCC version 0.9.24 is out thanks to Grischka (Changelog). TCC now supports compilation from standard input and the arm eabi.

(Jun 17, 2005) TCC version 0.9.23 is out (Changelog). This is the first version with support for the Windows target.

(Nov 8, 2004) TCC version 0.9.22 is out (Changelog). Linux kernel compilation is 30% faster (10 seconds on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4).

(Oct 25, 2004) TCC version 0.9.21 is out (Changelog). This version is the first one able to build a bootable Linux kernel with only a few patches to the kernel sources. As a demonstration, you can try the TCCBOOT boot loader. It is able to compile and boot a Linux kernel directly from its source code.

NOTE: if you want to compile the Linux kernel with TCC, you must use a custom build script as in TCCBOOT . I never tried to compile the Linux kernel with TinyCC and the standard Linux Makefiles.

 

Features

• 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 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.

Download

File	Comment
tcc-0.9.25.tar.bz2	Source archive
tcc-0.9.25-win32-bin.zip	Windows binary distribution

 

Compilation Speed

Compilation speed for the Links Browser project. There are 76936 lines (including headers). 1950947 lines (67.2 MBytes) are compiled because the same headers are included in many files. TinyCC is about 9 times faster than GCC.

 

Compiler	Time(s)	lines/second	MBytes/second
TinyCC 0.9.22	2.27	859000	29.6
GCC 3.2 -O0	20.0	98000	3.4

Measures were done on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4. Real time is measured. Compilation time includes compilation, assembly and linking.

Online Documentation

You want to help ?

Here are some suggestions:

• Report bugs to the mailing list (and eventually fix them).

Links

• TinyCC mailing list
• Savannah project page and CVS repository
• OTCC - The smallest self compiling pseudo C compiler
• FFASN1 - My small but powerful ASN.1 compiler.
• TinyCC fork by Rob Landley
• LLVM Compiler Infrastructure
• SmartEiffel - With TCC you can compile your Eiffel code faster
• C-- - An intermediate language for compilers
• The GNU C Compiler
• The LCC Compiler
• The Small Device C Compiler
• Cyclone, A Safe Dialect of C
• The D language
• Programming in C
• The Scriptometer evaluates various scripting languages (including TCC).

License