Introduction

Have you ever wondered how gcc turns C code into the 1s and 0s running on a microcontroller? This guide aims to give you a high-level understanding of that process so you’re better equipped to debug build issues.

Presentation

This presentation goes over the entire build process, from pre-processing to linking. By the end, you should understand (at a high level) how a C program (source + header file) gets converted into a single executable binary.

Note that this presentation doesn’t cover the following:

• How the binary gets flashed onto a microcontroller
• How the processor executes the code
• It doesn’t go into depth about any stages of the process
  • You can learn how a compiler works in a compiler class

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12lLWlmoqqt9IyqFMw2rRkrKlP7ss1a_KW3gRZiMJzRE/edit?usp=sharing

Demo

You can try this demo to see the different outputs of each stage in the build process.

https://github.com/UWOrbital/build-process-workshop

1. Create a GitHub codespace

   

2. In the terminal on the codespace, you can try the following commands and view the output files.

These commands stop the build process after the pre-processing stage:

gcc -E main.c -Iinc -o outputs/main.i

gcc -E src/example.c -Iinc -o outputs/example.i

These commands stop the build process after the compilation process: