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How does the compilation and linking process work?
(Note: This is meant to be an entry to Stack Overflow's C++ FAQ. If you want to critique the idea of providing an FAQ in this form, then the posting on meta that started all this would be the place to do that. Answers to that question are monitored in the C++ chatroom, where the FAQ idea started out in the first place, so your answer is very likely to get read by those who came up with the idea.)
The compilation of a C++ program involves three steps:
Preprocessing: the preprocessor takes a C++ source code file and deals with the #includes, #defines and other preprocessor directives. The output of this step is a "pure" C++ file without pre-processor directives.
Compilation: the compiler takes the pre-processor's output and produces an object file from it.
Linking: the linker takes the object files produced by the compiler and produces either a library or an executable file.
Preprocessing
The preprocessor handles the preprocessor directives, like #include and #define. It is agnostic of the syntax of C++, which is why it must be used with care.
It works on one C++ source file at a time by replacing #include directives with the content of the respective files (which is usually just declarations), doing replacement of macros (#define), and selecting different portions of text depending of #if, #ifdef and #ifndef directives.
The preprocessor works on a stream of preprocessing tokens. Macro substitution is defined as replacing tokens with other tokens (the operator ## enables merging two tokens when it makes sense).
After all this, the preprocessor produces a single output that is a stream of tokens resulting from the transformations described above. It also adds some special markers that tell the compiler where each line came from so that it can use those to produce sensible error messages.
Some errors can be produced at this stage with clever use of the #if and #error directives.
Compilation
The compilation step is performed on each output of the preprocessor. The compiler parses the pure C++ source code (now without any preprocessor directives) and converts it into assembly code. Then invokes underlying back-end(assembler in toolchain) that assembles that code into machine code producing actual binary file in some format(ELF, COFF, a.out, ...). This object file contains the compiled code (in binary form) of the symbols defined in the input. Symbols in object files are referred to by name.
Object files can refer to symbols that are not defined. This is the case when you use a declaration, and don't provide a definition for it. The compiler doesn't mind this, and will happily produce the object file as long as the source code is well-formed.
Compilers usually let you stop compilation at this point. This is very useful because with it you can compile each source code file separately. The advantage this provides is that you don't need to recompile everything if you only change a single file.
The produced object files can be put in special archives called static libraries, for easier reusing later on.
It's at this stage that "regular" compiler errors, like syntax errors or failed overload resolution errors, are reported.
Linking
The linker is what produces the final compilation output from the object files the compiler produced. This output can be either a shared (or dynamic) library (and while the name is similar, they haven't got much in common with static libraries mentioned earlier) or an executable.
It links all the object files by replacing the references to undefined symbols with the correct addresses. Each of these symbols can be defined in other object files or in libraries. If they are defined in libraries other than the standard library, you need to tell the linker about them.
At this stage the most common errors are missing definitions or duplicate definitions. The former means that either the definitions don't exist (i.e. they are not written), or that the object files or libraries where they reside were not given to the linker. The latter is obvious: the same symbol was defined in two different object files or libraries.
This topic is discussed at CProgramming.com:
https://www.cprogramming.com/compilingandlinking.html
Here is what the author there wrote:
Compiling isn't quite the same as creating an executable file!
Instead, creating an executable is a multistage process divided into
two components: compilation and linking. In reality, even if a program
"compiles fine" it might not actually work because of errors during
the linking phase. The total process of going from source code files
to an executable might better be referred to as a build.
Compilation
Compilation refers to the processing of source code files (.c, .cc, or
.cpp) and the creation of an 'object' file. This step doesn't create
anything the user can actually run. Instead, the compiler merely
produces the machine language instructions that correspond to the
source code file that was compiled. For instance, if you compile (but
don't link) three separate files, you will have three object files
created as output, each with the name .o or .obj
(the extension will depend on your compiler). Each of these files
contains a translation of your source code file into a machine
language file -- but you can't run them yet! You need to turn them
into executables your operating system can use. That's where the
linker comes in.
Linking
Linking refers to the creation of a single executable file from
multiple object files. In this step, it is common that the linker will
complain about undefined functions (commonly, main itself). During
compilation, if the compiler could not find the definition for a
particular function, it would just assume that the function was
defined in another file. If this isn't the case, there's no way the
compiler would know -- it doesn't look at the contents of more than
one file at a time. The linker, on the other hand, may look at
multiple files and try to find references for the functions that
weren't mentioned.
You might ask why there are separate compilation and linking steps.
First, it's probably easier to implement things that way. The compiler
does its thing, and the linker does its thing -- by keeping the
functions separate, the complexity of the program is reduced. Another
(more obvious) advantage is that this allows the creation of large
programs without having to redo the compilation step every time a file
is changed. Instead, using so called "conditional compilation", it is
necessary to compile only those source files that have changed; for
the rest, the object files are sufficient input for the linker.
Finally, this makes it simple to implement libraries of pre-compiled
code: just create object files and link them just like any other
object file. (The fact that each file is compiled separately from
information contained in other files, incidentally, is called the
"separate compilation model".)
To get the full benefits of condition compilation, it's probably
easier to get a program to help you than to try and remember which
files you've changed since you last compiled. (You could, of course,
just recompile every file that has a timestamp greater than the
timestamp of the corresponding object file.) If you're working with an
integrated development environment (IDE) it may already take care of
this for you. If you're using command line tools, there's a nifty
utility called make that comes with most *nix distributions. Along
with conditional compilation, it has several other nice features for
programming, such as allowing different compilations of your program
-- for instance, if you have a version producing verbose output for debugging.
Knowing the difference between the compilation phase and the link
phase can make it easier to hunt for bugs. Compiler errors are usually
syntactic in nature -- a missing semicolon, an extra parenthesis.
Linking errors usually have to do with missing or multiple
definitions. If you get an error that a function or variable is
defined multiple times from the linker, that's a good indication that
the error is that two of your source code files have the same function
or variable.
GCC compiles a C/C++ program into executable in 4 steps.
For example, gcc -o hello hello.c is carried out as follows:
1. Pre-processing
Preprocessing via the GNU C Preprocessor (cpp.exe), which includes
the headers (#include) and expands the macros (#define).
cpp hello.c > hello.i
The resultant intermediate file "hello.i" contains the expanded source code.
2. Compilation
The compiler compiles the pre-processed source code into assembly code for a specific processor.
gcc -S hello.i
The -S option specifies to produce assembly code, instead of object code. The resultant assembly file is "hello.s".
3. Assembly
The assembler (as.exe) converts the assembly code into machine code in the object file "hello.o".
as -o hello.o hello.s
4. Linker
Finally, the linker (ld.exe) links the object code with the library code to produce an executable file "hello".
ld -o hello hello.o ...libraries...
On the standard front:
a translation unit is the combination of a source files, included headers and source files less any source lines skipped by conditional inclusion preprocessor directive.
the standard defines 9 phases in the translation. The first four correspond to preprocessing, the next three are the compilation, the next one is the instantiation of templates (producing instantiation units) and the last one is the linking.
In practice the eighth phase (the instantiation of templates) is often done during the compilation process but some compilers delay it to the linking phase and some spread it in the two.
The skinny is that a CPU loads data from memory addresses, stores data to memory addresses, and execute instructions sequentially out of memory addresses, with some conditional jumps in the sequence of instructions processed. Each of these three categories of instructions involves computing an address to a memory cell to be used in the machine instruction. Because machine instructions are of a variable length depending on the particular instruction involved, and because we string a variable length of them together as we build our machine code, there is a two step process involved in calculating and building any addresses.
First we laying out the allocation of memory as best we can before we can know what exactly goes in each cell. We figure out the bytes, or words, or whatever that form the instructions and literals and any data. We just start allocating memory and building the values that will create the program as we go, and note down anyplace we need to go back and fix an address. In that place we put a dummy to just pad the location so we can continue to calculate memory size. For example our first machine code might take one cell. The next machine code might take 3 cells, involving one machine code cell and two address cells. Now our address pointer is 4. We know what goes in the machine cell, which is the op code, but we have to wait to calculate what goes in the address cells till we know where that data will be located, i.e. what will be the machine address of that data.
If there were just one source file a compiler could theoretically produce fully executable machine code without a linker. In a two pass process it could calculate all of the actual addresses to all of the data cells referenced by any machine load or store instructions. And it could calculate all of the absolute addresses referenced by any absolute jump instructions. This is how simpler compilers, like the one in Forth work, with no linker.
A linker is something that allows blocks of code to be compiled separately. This can speed up the overall process of building code, and allows some flexibility with how the blocks are later used, in other words they can be relocated in memory, for example adding 1000 to every address to scoot the block up by 1000 address cells.
So what the compiler outputs is rough machine code that is not yet fully built, but is laid out so we know the size of everything, in other words so we can start to calculate where all of the absolute addresses will be located. the compiler also outputs a list of symbols which are name/address pairs. The symbols relate a memory offset in the machine code in the module with a name. The offset being the absolute distance to the memory location of the symbol in the module.
That's where we get to the linker. The linker first slaps all of these blocks of machine code together end to end and notes down where each one starts. Then it calculates the addresses to be fixed by adding together the relative offset within a module and the absolute position of the module in the bigger layout.
Obviously I've oversimplified this so you can try to grasp it, and I have deliberately not used the jargon of object files, symbol tables, etc. which to me is part of the confusion.
How does the compilation and linking process work?
(Note: This is meant to be an entry to Stack Overflow's C++ FAQ. If you want to critique the idea of providing an FAQ in this form, then the posting on meta that started all this would be the place to do that. Answers to that question are monitored in the C++ chatroom, where the FAQ idea started out in the first place, so your answer is very likely to get read by those who came up with the idea.)
The compilation of a C++ program involves three steps:
Preprocessing: the preprocessor takes a C++ source code file and deals with the #includes, #defines and other preprocessor directives. The output of this step is a "pure" C++ file without pre-processor directives.
Compilation: the compiler takes the pre-processor's output and produces an object file from it.
Linking: the linker takes the object files produced by the compiler and produces either a library or an executable file.
Preprocessing
The preprocessor handles the preprocessor directives, like #include and #define. It is agnostic of the syntax of C++, which is why it must be used with care.
It works on one C++ source file at a time by replacing #include directives with the content of the respective files (which is usually just declarations), doing replacement of macros (#define), and selecting different portions of text depending of #if, #ifdef and #ifndef directives.
The preprocessor works on a stream of preprocessing tokens. Macro substitution is defined as replacing tokens with other tokens (the operator ## enables merging two tokens when it makes sense).
After all this, the preprocessor produces a single output that is a stream of tokens resulting from the transformations described above. It also adds some special markers that tell the compiler where each line came from so that it can use those to produce sensible error messages.
Some errors can be produced at this stage with clever use of the #if and #error directives.
Compilation
The compilation step is performed on each output of the preprocessor. The compiler parses the pure C++ source code (now without any preprocessor directives) and converts it into assembly code. Then invokes underlying back-end(assembler in toolchain) that assembles that code into machine code producing actual binary file in some format(ELF, COFF, a.out, ...). This object file contains the compiled code (in binary form) of the symbols defined in the input. Symbols in object files are referred to by name.
Object files can refer to symbols that are not defined. This is the case when you use a declaration, and don't provide a definition for it. The compiler doesn't mind this, and will happily produce the object file as long as the source code is well-formed.
Compilers usually let you stop compilation at this point. This is very useful because with it you can compile each source code file separately. The advantage this provides is that you don't need to recompile everything if you only change a single file.
The produced object files can be put in special archives called static libraries, for easier reusing later on.
It's at this stage that "regular" compiler errors, like syntax errors or failed overload resolution errors, are reported.
Linking
The linker is what produces the final compilation output from the object files the compiler produced. This output can be either a shared (or dynamic) library (and while the name is similar, they haven't got much in common with static libraries mentioned earlier) or an executable.
It links all the object files by replacing the references to undefined symbols with the correct addresses. Each of these symbols can be defined in other object files or in libraries. If they are defined in libraries other than the standard library, you need to tell the linker about them.
At this stage the most common errors are missing definitions or duplicate definitions. The former means that either the definitions don't exist (i.e. they are not written), or that the object files or libraries where they reside were not given to the linker. The latter is obvious: the same symbol was defined in two different object files or libraries.
This topic is discussed at CProgramming.com:
https://www.cprogramming.com/compilingandlinking.html
Here is what the author there wrote:
Compiling isn't quite the same as creating an executable file!
Instead, creating an executable is a multistage process divided into
two components: compilation and linking. In reality, even if a program
"compiles fine" it might not actually work because of errors during
the linking phase. The total process of going from source code files
to an executable might better be referred to as a build.
Compilation
Compilation refers to the processing of source code files (.c, .cc, or
.cpp) and the creation of an 'object' file. This step doesn't create
anything the user can actually run. Instead, the compiler merely
produces the machine language instructions that correspond to the
source code file that was compiled. For instance, if you compile (but
don't link) three separate files, you will have three object files
created as output, each with the name .o or .obj
(the extension will depend on your compiler). Each of these files
contains a translation of your source code file into a machine
language file -- but you can't run them yet! You need to turn them
into executables your operating system can use. That's where the
linker comes in.
Linking
Linking refers to the creation of a single executable file from
multiple object files. In this step, it is common that the linker will
complain about undefined functions (commonly, main itself). During
compilation, if the compiler could not find the definition for a
particular function, it would just assume that the function was
defined in another file. If this isn't the case, there's no way the
compiler would know -- it doesn't look at the contents of more than
one file at a time. The linker, on the other hand, may look at
multiple files and try to find references for the functions that
weren't mentioned.
You might ask why there are separate compilation and linking steps.
First, it's probably easier to implement things that way. The compiler
does its thing, and the linker does its thing -- by keeping the
functions separate, the complexity of the program is reduced. Another
(more obvious) advantage is that this allows the creation of large
programs without having to redo the compilation step every time a file
is changed. Instead, using so called "conditional compilation", it is
necessary to compile only those source files that have changed; for
the rest, the object files are sufficient input for the linker.
Finally, this makes it simple to implement libraries of pre-compiled
code: just create object files and link them just like any other
object file. (The fact that each file is compiled separately from
information contained in other files, incidentally, is called the
"separate compilation model".)
To get the full benefits of condition compilation, it's probably
easier to get a program to help you than to try and remember which
files you've changed since you last compiled. (You could, of course,
just recompile every file that has a timestamp greater than the
timestamp of the corresponding object file.) If you're working with an
integrated development environment (IDE) it may already take care of
this for you. If you're using command line tools, there's a nifty
utility called make that comes with most *nix distributions. Along
with conditional compilation, it has several other nice features for
programming, such as allowing different compilations of your program
-- for instance, if you have a version producing verbose output for debugging.
Knowing the difference between the compilation phase and the link
phase can make it easier to hunt for bugs. Compiler errors are usually
syntactic in nature -- a missing semicolon, an extra parenthesis.
Linking errors usually have to do with missing or multiple
definitions. If you get an error that a function or variable is
defined multiple times from the linker, that's a good indication that
the error is that two of your source code files have the same function
or variable.
GCC compiles a C/C++ program into executable in 4 steps.
For example, gcc -o hello hello.c is carried out as follows:
1. Pre-processing
Preprocessing via the GNU C Preprocessor (cpp.exe), which includes
the headers (#include) and expands the macros (#define).
cpp hello.c > hello.i
The resultant intermediate file "hello.i" contains the expanded source code.
2. Compilation
The compiler compiles the pre-processed source code into assembly code for a specific processor.
gcc -S hello.i
The -S option specifies to produce assembly code, instead of object code. The resultant assembly file is "hello.s".
3. Assembly
The assembler (as.exe) converts the assembly code into machine code in the object file "hello.o".
as -o hello.o hello.s
4. Linker
Finally, the linker (ld.exe) links the object code with the library code to produce an executable file "hello".
ld -o hello hello.o ...libraries...
On the standard front:
a translation unit is the combination of a source files, included headers and source files less any source lines skipped by conditional inclusion preprocessor directive.
the standard defines 9 phases in the translation. The first four correspond to preprocessing, the next three are the compilation, the next one is the instantiation of templates (producing instantiation units) and the last one is the linking.
In practice the eighth phase (the instantiation of templates) is often done during the compilation process but some compilers delay it to the linking phase and some spread it in the two.
The skinny is that a CPU loads data from memory addresses, stores data to memory addresses, and execute instructions sequentially out of memory addresses, with some conditional jumps in the sequence of instructions processed. Each of these three categories of instructions involves computing an address to a memory cell to be used in the machine instruction. Because machine instructions are of a variable length depending on the particular instruction involved, and because we string a variable length of them together as we build our machine code, there is a two step process involved in calculating and building any addresses.
First we laying out the allocation of memory as best we can before we can know what exactly goes in each cell. We figure out the bytes, or words, or whatever that form the instructions and literals and any data. We just start allocating memory and building the values that will create the program as we go, and note down anyplace we need to go back and fix an address. In that place we put a dummy to just pad the location so we can continue to calculate memory size. For example our first machine code might take one cell. The next machine code might take 3 cells, involving one machine code cell and two address cells. Now our address pointer is 4. We know what goes in the machine cell, which is the op code, but we have to wait to calculate what goes in the address cells till we know where that data will be located, i.e. what will be the machine address of that data.
If there were just one source file a compiler could theoretically produce fully executable machine code without a linker. In a two pass process it could calculate all of the actual addresses to all of the data cells referenced by any machine load or store instructions. And it could calculate all of the absolute addresses referenced by any absolute jump instructions. This is how simpler compilers, like the one in Forth work, with no linker.
A linker is something that allows blocks of code to be compiled separately. This can speed up the overall process of building code, and allows some flexibility with how the blocks are later used, in other words they can be relocated in memory, for example adding 1000 to every address to scoot the block up by 1000 address cells.
So what the compiler outputs is rough machine code that is not yet fully built, but is laid out so we know the size of everything, in other words so we can start to calculate where all of the absolute addresses will be located. the compiler also outputs a list of symbols which are name/address pairs. The symbols relate a memory offset in the machine code in the module with a name. The offset being the absolute distance to the memory location of the symbol in the module.
That's where we get to the linker. The linker first slaps all of these blocks of machine code together end to end and notes down where each one starts. Then it calculates the addresses to be fixed by adding together the relative offset within a module and the absolute position of the module in the bigger layout.
Obviously I've oversimplified this so you can try to grasp it, and I have deliberately not used the jargon of object files, symbol tables, etc. which to me is part of the confusion.
How does the compilation and linking process work?
(Note: This is meant to be an entry to Stack Overflow's C++ FAQ. If you want to critique the idea of providing an FAQ in this form, then the posting on meta that started all this would be the place to do that. Answers to that question are monitored in the C++ chatroom, where the FAQ idea started out in the first place, so your answer is very likely to get read by those who came up with the idea.)
The compilation of a C++ program involves three steps:
Preprocessing: the preprocessor takes a C++ source code file and deals with the #includes, #defines and other preprocessor directives. The output of this step is a "pure" C++ file without pre-processor directives.
Compilation: the compiler takes the pre-processor's output and produces an object file from it.
Linking: the linker takes the object files produced by the compiler and produces either a library or an executable file.
Preprocessing
The preprocessor handles the preprocessor directives, like #include and #define. It is agnostic of the syntax of C++, which is why it must be used with care.
It works on one C++ source file at a time by replacing #include directives with the content of the respective files (which is usually just declarations), doing replacement of macros (#define), and selecting different portions of text depending of #if, #ifdef and #ifndef directives.
The preprocessor works on a stream of preprocessing tokens. Macro substitution is defined as replacing tokens with other tokens (the operator ## enables merging two tokens when it makes sense).
After all this, the preprocessor produces a single output that is a stream of tokens resulting from the transformations described above. It also adds some special markers that tell the compiler where each line came from so that it can use those to produce sensible error messages.
Some errors can be produced at this stage with clever use of the #if and #error directives.
Compilation
The compilation step is performed on each output of the preprocessor. The compiler parses the pure C++ source code (now without any preprocessor directives) and converts it into assembly code. Then invokes underlying back-end(assembler in toolchain) that assembles that code into machine code producing actual binary file in some format(ELF, COFF, a.out, ...). This object file contains the compiled code (in binary form) of the symbols defined in the input. Symbols in object files are referred to by name.
Object files can refer to symbols that are not defined. This is the case when you use a declaration, and don't provide a definition for it. The compiler doesn't mind this, and will happily produce the object file as long as the source code is well-formed.
Compilers usually let you stop compilation at this point. This is very useful because with it you can compile each source code file separately. The advantage this provides is that you don't need to recompile everything if you only change a single file.
The produced object files can be put in special archives called static libraries, for easier reusing later on.
It's at this stage that "regular" compiler errors, like syntax errors or failed overload resolution errors, are reported.
Linking
The linker is what produces the final compilation output from the object files the compiler produced. This output can be either a shared (or dynamic) library (and while the name is similar, they haven't got much in common with static libraries mentioned earlier) or an executable.
It links all the object files by replacing the references to undefined symbols with the correct addresses. Each of these symbols can be defined in other object files or in libraries. If they are defined in libraries other than the standard library, you need to tell the linker about them.
At this stage the most common errors are missing definitions or duplicate definitions. The former means that either the definitions don't exist (i.e. they are not written), or that the object files or libraries where they reside were not given to the linker. The latter is obvious: the same symbol was defined in two different object files or libraries.
This topic is discussed at CProgramming.com:
https://www.cprogramming.com/compilingandlinking.html
Here is what the author there wrote:
Compiling isn't quite the same as creating an executable file!
Instead, creating an executable is a multistage process divided into
two components: compilation and linking. In reality, even if a program
"compiles fine" it might not actually work because of errors during
the linking phase. The total process of going from source code files
to an executable might better be referred to as a build.
Compilation
Compilation refers to the processing of source code files (.c, .cc, or
.cpp) and the creation of an 'object' file. This step doesn't create
anything the user can actually run. Instead, the compiler merely
produces the machine language instructions that correspond to the
source code file that was compiled. For instance, if you compile (but
don't link) three separate files, you will have three object files
created as output, each with the name .o or .obj
(the extension will depend on your compiler). Each of these files
contains a translation of your source code file into a machine
language file -- but you can't run them yet! You need to turn them
into executables your operating system can use. That's where the
linker comes in.
Linking
Linking refers to the creation of a single executable file from
multiple object files. In this step, it is common that the linker will
complain about undefined functions (commonly, main itself). During
compilation, if the compiler could not find the definition for a
particular function, it would just assume that the function was
defined in another file. If this isn't the case, there's no way the
compiler would know -- it doesn't look at the contents of more than
one file at a time. The linker, on the other hand, may look at
multiple files and try to find references for the functions that
weren't mentioned.
You might ask why there are separate compilation and linking steps.
First, it's probably easier to implement things that way. The compiler
does its thing, and the linker does its thing -- by keeping the
functions separate, the complexity of the program is reduced. Another
(more obvious) advantage is that this allows the creation of large
programs without having to redo the compilation step every time a file
is changed. Instead, using so called "conditional compilation", it is
necessary to compile only those source files that have changed; for
the rest, the object files are sufficient input for the linker.
Finally, this makes it simple to implement libraries of pre-compiled
code: just create object files and link them just like any other
object file. (The fact that each file is compiled separately from
information contained in other files, incidentally, is called the
"separate compilation model".)
To get the full benefits of condition compilation, it's probably
easier to get a program to help you than to try and remember which
files you've changed since you last compiled. (You could, of course,
just recompile every file that has a timestamp greater than the
timestamp of the corresponding object file.) If you're working with an
integrated development environment (IDE) it may already take care of
this for you. If you're using command line tools, there's a nifty
utility called make that comes with most *nix distributions. Along
with conditional compilation, it has several other nice features for
programming, such as allowing different compilations of your program
-- for instance, if you have a version producing verbose output for debugging.
Knowing the difference between the compilation phase and the link
phase can make it easier to hunt for bugs. Compiler errors are usually
syntactic in nature -- a missing semicolon, an extra parenthesis.
Linking errors usually have to do with missing or multiple
definitions. If you get an error that a function or variable is
defined multiple times from the linker, that's a good indication that
the error is that two of your source code files have the same function
or variable.
GCC compiles a C/C++ program into executable in 4 steps.
For example, gcc -o hello hello.c is carried out as follows:
1. Pre-processing
Preprocessing via the GNU C Preprocessor (cpp.exe), which includes
the headers (#include) and expands the macros (#define).
cpp hello.c > hello.i
The resultant intermediate file "hello.i" contains the expanded source code.
2. Compilation
The compiler compiles the pre-processed source code into assembly code for a specific processor.
gcc -S hello.i
The -S option specifies to produce assembly code, instead of object code. The resultant assembly file is "hello.s".
3. Assembly
The assembler (as.exe) converts the assembly code into machine code in the object file "hello.o".
as -o hello.o hello.s
4. Linker
Finally, the linker (ld.exe) links the object code with the library code to produce an executable file "hello".
ld -o hello hello.o ...libraries...
On the standard front:
a translation unit is the combination of a source files, included headers and source files less any source lines skipped by conditional inclusion preprocessor directive.
the standard defines 9 phases in the translation. The first four correspond to preprocessing, the next three are the compilation, the next one is the instantiation of templates (producing instantiation units) and the last one is the linking.
In practice the eighth phase (the instantiation of templates) is often done during the compilation process but some compilers delay it to the linking phase and some spread it in the two.
The skinny is that a CPU loads data from memory addresses, stores data to memory addresses, and execute instructions sequentially out of memory addresses, with some conditional jumps in the sequence of instructions processed. Each of these three categories of instructions involves computing an address to a memory cell to be used in the machine instruction. Because machine instructions are of a variable length depending on the particular instruction involved, and because we string a variable length of them together as we build our machine code, there is a two step process involved in calculating and building any addresses.
First we laying out the allocation of memory as best we can before we can know what exactly goes in each cell. We figure out the bytes, or words, or whatever that form the instructions and literals and any data. We just start allocating memory and building the values that will create the program as we go, and note down anyplace we need to go back and fix an address. In that place we put a dummy to just pad the location so we can continue to calculate memory size. For example our first machine code might take one cell. The next machine code might take 3 cells, involving one machine code cell and two address cells. Now our address pointer is 4. We know what goes in the machine cell, which is the op code, but we have to wait to calculate what goes in the address cells till we know where that data will be located, i.e. what will be the machine address of that data.
If there were just one source file a compiler could theoretically produce fully executable machine code without a linker. In a two pass process it could calculate all of the actual addresses to all of the data cells referenced by any machine load or store instructions. And it could calculate all of the absolute addresses referenced by any absolute jump instructions. This is how simpler compilers, like the one in Forth work, with no linker.
A linker is something that allows blocks of code to be compiled separately. This can speed up the overall process of building code, and allows some flexibility with how the blocks are later used, in other words they can be relocated in memory, for example adding 1000 to every address to scoot the block up by 1000 address cells.
So what the compiler outputs is rough machine code that is not yet fully built, but is laid out so we know the size of everything, in other words so we can start to calculate where all of the absolute addresses will be located. the compiler also outputs a list of symbols which are name/address pairs. The symbols relate a memory offset in the machine code in the module with a name. The offset being the absolute distance to the memory location of the symbol in the module.
That's where we get to the linker. The linker first slaps all of these blocks of machine code together end to end and notes down where each one starts. Then it calculates the addresses to be fixed by adding together the relative offset within a module and the absolute position of the module in the bigger layout.
Obviously I've oversimplified this so you can try to grasp it, and I have deliberately not used the jargon of object files, symbol tables, etc. which to me is part of the confusion.
How do compilers know when it is not necessary to recompile certain parts of code especially in larger projects?
For example, let's say in C++ we have two C++ files and two header files. The header files depend on one another. (They use the classes specified in each others files.)
Does a compiler always need to parse both header files, (and maybe C++ files for method implementation,) to obtain the class information in order to generate either of the two C++ files?
I always thought that when you run the compiler at the command prompt, it closes immediately after outputting the object files - so it would be impossible to cache the Abstract Syntax Trees or intermediate code. Do most C++ compilers know when a certain file doesn't need to output to an object file, and is therefore skipped?
All of the compilers I know compile every source file they're
told to. Always. And they generate a new version of the object
file for every source file they compile.
Only compiling what is necessary is a job generally left to the
build system (make or other). Knowing which objects need to be
regenerated depend on what each source file includes, directly
or indirectly; most compilers have options to output this
information in some format, either on the fly or as a separate
invocation, and the build systems (the usable ones, at least)
use this information to determine dependencies.
As said above, compilers will compiler every file that it is asked to compile. It is up to tools like make to decide what needs to be compiled.
In make one sets up rules. Each rule has a target, list of dependencies followed by the commands to run if those dependencies are not met. For example
target.o : target.c
gcc -c -o target.o target.c
On most file systems, each file has a timestamp. If target.o has a newer timestamp than target.c (the rule dependency) then make does not run the gcc command below. This is because one firsts edits a source file and then compiles the source file into an object file.
If however the dependent source file is newer than the target, then we know the source file was edited after the compile took place and another compile is in order. make will therefore execute the build command for the rule.
It gets a lot more complex when rules are dependent on other rules but the same principle applies.
I don't know how they (don't) implement it (because many don't... Don't ask me why) but I'm quite sure it would be VERY easy. You save in the intermediate (obj) file the name and the hash of the source file and of every dependent file you are compiling, together with the compilation options that are being used, the hash of the compiler (or its internal version) and the compilation result (ok/error). Next time the user tries to recompile the file, the compiler checks if there is already the intermediate file, checks if all the hashes are the same, if the compilation options are the same and if the compiler is the same... If everything is the same, it gives the pre-saved error message and exits without doing anything.
The intermediate files would be a little bigger (probably some kb each).
How does the compilation and linking process work?
(Note: This is meant to be an entry to Stack Overflow's C++ FAQ. If you want to critique the idea of providing an FAQ in this form, then the posting on meta that started all this would be the place to do that. Answers to that question are monitored in the C++ chatroom, where the FAQ idea started out in the first place, so your answer is very likely to get read by those who came up with the idea.)
The compilation of a C++ program involves three steps:
Preprocessing: the preprocessor takes a C++ source code file and deals with the #includes, #defines and other preprocessor directives. The output of this step is a "pure" C++ file without pre-processor directives.
Compilation: the compiler takes the pre-processor's output and produces an object file from it.
Linking: the linker takes the object files produced by the compiler and produces either a library or an executable file.
Preprocessing
The preprocessor handles the preprocessor directives, like #include and #define. It is agnostic of the syntax of C++, which is why it must be used with care.
It works on one C++ source file at a time by replacing #include directives with the content of the respective files (which is usually just declarations), doing replacement of macros (#define), and selecting different portions of text depending of #if, #ifdef and #ifndef directives.
The preprocessor works on a stream of preprocessing tokens. Macro substitution is defined as replacing tokens with other tokens (the operator ## enables merging two tokens when it makes sense).
After all this, the preprocessor produces a single output that is a stream of tokens resulting from the transformations described above. It also adds some special markers that tell the compiler where each line came from so that it can use those to produce sensible error messages.
Some errors can be produced at this stage with clever use of the #if and #error directives.
Compilation
The compilation step is performed on each output of the preprocessor. The compiler parses the pure C++ source code (now without any preprocessor directives) and converts it into assembly code. Then invokes underlying back-end(assembler in toolchain) that assembles that code into machine code producing actual binary file in some format(ELF, COFF, a.out, ...). This object file contains the compiled code (in binary form) of the symbols defined in the input. Symbols in object files are referred to by name.
Object files can refer to symbols that are not defined. This is the case when you use a declaration, and don't provide a definition for it. The compiler doesn't mind this, and will happily produce the object file as long as the source code is well-formed.
Compilers usually let you stop compilation at this point. This is very useful because with it you can compile each source code file separately. The advantage this provides is that you don't need to recompile everything if you only change a single file.
The produced object files can be put in special archives called static libraries, for easier reusing later on.
It's at this stage that "regular" compiler errors, like syntax errors or failed overload resolution errors, are reported.
Linking
The linker is what produces the final compilation output from the object files the compiler produced. This output can be either a shared (or dynamic) library (and while the name is similar, they haven't got much in common with static libraries mentioned earlier) or an executable.
It links all the object files by replacing the references to undefined symbols with the correct addresses. Each of these symbols can be defined in other object files or in libraries. If they are defined in libraries other than the standard library, you need to tell the linker about them.
At this stage the most common errors are missing definitions or duplicate definitions. The former means that either the definitions don't exist (i.e. they are not written), or that the object files or libraries where they reside were not given to the linker. The latter is obvious: the same symbol was defined in two different object files or libraries.
This topic is discussed at CProgramming.com:
https://www.cprogramming.com/compilingandlinking.html
Here is what the author there wrote:
Compiling isn't quite the same as creating an executable file!
Instead, creating an executable is a multistage process divided into
two components: compilation and linking. In reality, even if a program
"compiles fine" it might not actually work because of errors during
the linking phase. The total process of going from source code files
to an executable might better be referred to as a build.
Compilation
Compilation refers to the processing of source code files (.c, .cc, or
.cpp) and the creation of an 'object' file. This step doesn't create
anything the user can actually run. Instead, the compiler merely
produces the machine language instructions that correspond to the
source code file that was compiled. For instance, if you compile (but
don't link) three separate files, you will have three object files
created as output, each with the name .o or .obj
(the extension will depend on your compiler). Each of these files
contains a translation of your source code file into a machine
language file -- but you can't run them yet! You need to turn them
into executables your operating system can use. That's where the
linker comes in.
Linking
Linking refers to the creation of a single executable file from
multiple object files. In this step, it is common that the linker will
complain about undefined functions (commonly, main itself). During
compilation, if the compiler could not find the definition for a
particular function, it would just assume that the function was
defined in another file. If this isn't the case, there's no way the
compiler would know -- it doesn't look at the contents of more than
one file at a time. The linker, on the other hand, may look at
multiple files and try to find references for the functions that
weren't mentioned.
You might ask why there are separate compilation and linking steps.
First, it's probably easier to implement things that way. The compiler
does its thing, and the linker does its thing -- by keeping the
functions separate, the complexity of the program is reduced. Another
(more obvious) advantage is that this allows the creation of large
programs without having to redo the compilation step every time a file
is changed. Instead, using so called "conditional compilation", it is
necessary to compile only those source files that have changed; for
the rest, the object files are sufficient input for the linker.
Finally, this makes it simple to implement libraries of pre-compiled
code: just create object files and link them just like any other
object file. (The fact that each file is compiled separately from
information contained in other files, incidentally, is called the
"separate compilation model".)
To get the full benefits of condition compilation, it's probably
easier to get a program to help you than to try and remember which
files you've changed since you last compiled. (You could, of course,
just recompile every file that has a timestamp greater than the
timestamp of the corresponding object file.) If you're working with an
integrated development environment (IDE) it may already take care of
this for you. If you're using command line tools, there's a nifty
utility called make that comes with most *nix distributions. Along
with conditional compilation, it has several other nice features for
programming, such as allowing different compilations of your program
-- for instance, if you have a version producing verbose output for debugging.
Knowing the difference between the compilation phase and the link
phase can make it easier to hunt for bugs. Compiler errors are usually
syntactic in nature -- a missing semicolon, an extra parenthesis.
Linking errors usually have to do with missing or multiple
definitions. If you get an error that a function or variable is
defined multiple times from the linker, that's a good indication that
the error is that two of your source code files have the same function
or variable.
GCC compiles a C/C++ program into executable in 4 steps.
For example, gcc -o hello hello.c is carried out as follows:
1. Pre-processing
Preprocessing via the GNU C Preprocessor (cpp.exe), which includes
the headers (#include) and expands the macros (#define).
cpp hello.c > hello.i
The resultant intermediate file "hello.i" contains the expanded source code.
2. Compilation
The compiler compiles the pre-processed source code into assembly code for a specific processor.
gcc -S hello.i
The -S option specifies to produce assembly code, instead of object code. The resultant assembly file is "hello.s".
3. Assembly
The assembler (as.exe) converts the assembly code into machine code in the object file "hello.o".
as -o hello.o hello.s
4. Linker
Finally, the linker (ld.exe) links the object code with the library code to produce an executable file "hello".
ld -o hello hello.o ...libraries...
On the standard front:
a translation unit is the combination of a source files, included headers and source files less any source lines skipped by conditional inclusion preprocessor directive.
the standard defines 9 phases in the translation. The first four correspond to preprocessing, the next three are the compilation, the next one is the instantiation of templates (producing instantiation units) and the last one is the linking.
In practice the eighth phase (the instantiation of templates) is often done during the compilation process but some compilers delay it to the linking phase and some spread it in the two.
The skinny is that a CPU loads data from memory addresses, stores data to memory addresses, and execute instructions sequentially out of memory addresses, with some conditional jumps in the sequence of instructions processed. Each of these three categories of instructions involves computing an address to a memory cell to be used in the machine instruction. Because machine instructions are of a variable length depending on the particular instruction involved, and because we string a variable length of them together as we build our machine code, there is a two step process involved in calculating and building any addresses.
First we laying out the allocation of memory as best we can before we can know what exactly goes in each cell. We figure out the bytes, or words, or whatever that form the instructions and literals and any data. We just start allocating memory and building the values that will create the program as we go, and note down anyplace we need to go back and fix an address. In that place we put a dummy to just pad the location so we can continue to calculate memory size. For example our first machine code might take one cell. The next machine code might take 3 cells, involving one machine code cell and two address cells. Now our address pointer is 4. We know what goes in the machine cell, which is the op code, but we have to wait to calculate what goes in the address cells till we know where that data will be located, i.e. what will be the machine address of that data.
If there were just one source file a compiler could theoretically produce fully executable machine code without a linker. In a two pass process it could calculate all of the actual addresses to all of the data cells referenced by any machine load or store instructions. And it could calculate all of the absolute addresses referenced by any absolute jump instructions. This is how simpler compilers, like the one in Forth work, with no linker.
A linker is something that allows blocks of code to be compiled separately. This can speed up the overall process of building code, and allows some flexibility with how the blocks are later used, in other words they can be relocated in memory, for example adding 1000 to every address to scoot the block up by 1000 address cells.
So what the compiler outputs is rough machine code that is not yet fully built, but is laid out so we know the size of everything, in other words so we can start to calculate where all of the absolute addresses will be located. the compiler also outputs a list of symbols which are name/address pairs. The symbols relate a memory offset in the machine code in the module with a name. The offset being the absolute distance to the memory location of the symbol in the module.
That's where we get to the linker. The linker first slaps all of these blocks of machine code together end to end and notes down where each one starts. Then it calculates the addresses to be fixed by adding together the relative offset within a module and the absolute position of the module in the bigger layout.
Obviously I've oversimplified this so you can try to grasp it, and I have deliberately not used the jargon of object files, symbol tables, etc. which to me is part of the confusion.