I'm working on a toy bootloader/kernel written in assembly and run on the qemu emulator. I can run qemu with -s -S option and debug with gdb using remote target, but I don't have any debug symbols loaded with gdb. How can I generate a symbol file from my assembly?
I'm using nasm to generate a binary image for qemu to run from my assembly file, but I haven't found anyway to include debug information in the image itself (I'm not sure if that even makes sense). I also found that gdb allows you to load an separate symbol file for debugging, so now my issue is how to generate a symbol file from my assembly code.
I've seen suggestions to use objcopy, but I believe that only works on elf files, not binary. I've tried getting nasm to generate an elf, but it keeps barfing because of my (necessary) org directive in the assembly file.
It would say try it like this:
use "-f elf -F dwarf -g" switches when assembling. This should produce elf file that contains debug symbols (and code and everything else).
Use objcopy to generate binary file.
Load binary file to your system.
Attach debugger, then tell it to load symbols from your .elf file (symbol-file yourfile.elf)
You need to solve why nasm can't generate .elf file with .org you have in there. I have no idea. GNA as is fine with this.
$ nasm -g -f elf64 -l 2.lst 2.asm
$ gcc -m64 -o 2.exe 2.o
I am newly learning c++. I ran a c++ code on vscode and it creates an exe file. Why is it?
Why the exe file is so big whereas the main file is small? Is there any way to shorten the size of this file?
Because you ask for one.
g++ Sample.cpp -o Sample
And then you run it
./Sample
This is the ordinary behaviour for creating programs in C++. Doing it this way means that you can send Sample.exe to another computer (of the same operating system and processor architecture), and it will run with no other files needed.
There's maybe tens of bytes of your program, and the rest of the size is the C++ runtime environment.
Your CPU cannot understand what's written inside Sample.cpp, therefore you need to compile it with:
g++ Sample.cpp -o Sample.exe
Now Sample.exe has a lot of information that you, as a human, cannot read or understad, but your computer can! You can ask to execute it with:
./Sample.exe
To reduce Sample.exe size you need to optimize it. There are many flags you can add to the g++ compiler. For example:
g++ Sample.cpp -o Sample.exe -Os -s
Please note that reducing the final .exe size means that the compilation is going to take more time (nothing is free unluckly).
When experimenting with some code ("debug" or "development" mode) it's unusual to reduce the .exe size, as you are just focussing on the result.
Reducing the .exe size is only done when in "production" mode (when the file is going to get published and shared).
Googling g++ reduce exe size leads to many interesting stackoverflow Q&A and many other sites as well! But, remember, this should be done only when publishing the executable online.
A tool that I use for a final size optimization is UPX: the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables.
I've recently installed a vim editor in my Windows operating system.
I only know the conventional procedure i.e, creating the source file in the editor and running it from the command line. But,
I don't quite understand how to compile a CPP program directly from the vim editor.
when I run the command
:!g++ hello.cpp -o hello
from the vim command line, I get the following message
C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c (g++ hello.cpp -o hello)
Hit any key to close this window...
I assume your version of Vim is windows version and not cygwin version.
First you need to install a compiler, and make sure it's in your PATH.
Also, read the documentation about quickfix window as this is the integrated vim way of compiling. :!make or :!g++ ... are not the way to go.
MSVC
I don't suppose this is the compiler you have as I expect you'd have used Visual Studio in that case. Anyway, IIRC, there is a msdev compiler plugin you could load with :compiler msdev, then you should able to run :make.
Don't hesitate to complete my answer if you see errors.
g++ through cygwin
There is a big advantage: gnumake is properly configured: in the console you could run make foo, and if you have foo.cpp or foo.c and no Makefile in the current directory, this would compile the monofile project. In all cases, a Makefile is fine; and it's required with multiple source files.
The big problem: pathnames are not expressed in the same way. They need to be translated. I provide a way to do that in my Build-Tools-Wrapper plugin. Just execute :BTW add cygwin.
Then from vim, again type :make %<. That will translate into :make foo (assuming you're editing foo.cpp), which translates into make fooshell wise, which translates into $CXX $CPPFLAGS $CXXFLAGS $LDFLAGS foo.cpp -o foo $LDLIBS (or something like that).
Note: this means the options can be tweaked with: :let $CXXFLAGS = '-std=c++17 -Wall -Wextra'
BTW, if you have my build-tools-wrapper plugin, you can execute directly :Make instead of :make %<, or just <F5>directly, IIRC.
g++ through mingw
The good news: no need to translate pathnames
The bad news, gnumake isn't correctly configured. This means that in the console make foo won't work. And consequently, this won't work from Vim.
This time, you'll either need a Makefile, or you'll need to tweak 'makeprg' setting. Like for instance :let &makeprg = 'g++ -Wall -Wextra -std=c++17 -o %< %' and then type simply :make.
Can GCC compile and run a source code without generating any output file (neither object nor executable), in a manner that is supported cross-platform? Especially, a solution supported by GCC directly.
I want to avoid generation of any trace file since that is a minor code in a big project. It just messes up the bin directory.
An existing question, here, provides a solution for compiling source code without generating any output file, such as:
gcc somefile.c -o /dev/null
However, this only compiles, and doesn't run.
Another similar question here provides a solution that is specific to Windows OS, not cross-platform.
A simple bash script might help:
#!/bin/bash
echo 'compile... ' $1
gcc $1 && ./a.out && rm a.out
supposed it's named once, then you can do
$ sh once any.c
to compile any.c and just run it once.
You can also make once executable with chmod +x once so you can just type
$ once any.c
Hope it helps ;)
In order to compile and run the C / C++ program and then remove the compiled file, you should add a function to delete the program after it is executed.
Here is a link to an example of a program that deletes itself.
Click Here
In your case (you want to avoid cluttering the build tree), a practically useful solution might be to have some convention about temporary executables.
For example, you could decide that every intermediate executable or file is named *.tmp or _* or *.tmpbin (for temporary binaries) and have some Makefile rules which removes them. Or you could use mktemp(1) in your Makefile to get a temporary file name. Don't forget to remove it later.
Also, most big projects have a compilation step and an installing step (often make install); and if you don't have that you probably should. You want your installing step to avoid installing the temporary binaries or files; with some naming convention this is quite simple: the first command for install phony target in your Makefile would remove these temporary binaries or files.
Also, you generally build in a file tree different of the final bin/ directory, so you could leave the temporary executables in the build tree.
As several people noticed, removing its own executable is easy on Linux (do a readlink(2) on "/proc/self/exe" (see proc(5) for details) then unlink(2) the result of readlink....) but difficult on Windows.
So practically your question is not a very important issue.... (if you use suitable build conventions). And GCC work on files (because it will run ld internally to build that executable file); however GCCJIT is hiding them. AFAIK, you won't even be able to use /dev/stdout as the executable output of gcc (but you can run gcc -x c /dev/stdin to compile C code from stdin). So GCC cannot avoid making an executable file (but you could have it temporary, or in a tmpfs file system or a FUSE one). So you need something external to your gcc command (perhaps simple an rm in some following line of your Makefile) to remove the produced executable.
You could also decide to have (dynamically loaded) plugins (e.g. use dlopen(3) on Linux). Your main program could load a plugin (with dlopen on Linux) - perhaps even after having generated dynamically its C++ code and having compiled that generated code into e.g. some shared object .so on Linux (or some DLL on Windows), as I do in MELT -, run functions in it obtained with dlsym, and unload the plugin (with dlclose on Linux) and finally remove it. You might use cross-platform frameworks like Qt or POCO to avoid dealing with OS specific plugin code.
For c gcc/g++ filname.c && ./a.out && rm a.out
For c++ g++ filename.cpp && ./a.out && rm a.out
How can I compile/run C or C++ code in a Unix console or a Mac terminal?
If it is a simple single-source program,
make foo
where the source file is foo.c, foo.cpp, etc., you don’t even need a makefile. Make has enough built-in rules to build your source file into an executable of the same name, minus the extension.
Running the executable just built is the same as running any program - but you will most often need to specify the path to the executable as the shell will only search what is in $PATH to find executables, and most often that does not include the current directory (.).
So to run the built executable foo:
./foo
gcc main.cpp -o main.out
./main.out
This is the command that works on all Unix machines... I use it on Linux/Ubuntu, but it works in OS X as well. Type the following command in Terminal.app.
g++ -o lab21 iterative.cpp
-o is the letter O, not zero
lab21 will be your executable file
iterative.cpp is your C++ file
After you run that command, type the following in the terminal to run your program:
./lab21
Two steps for me:
First:
make foo
Then:
./foo
All application execution in a Unix (Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, etc.) environment depends on the executable search path.
You can display this path in the terminal with this command:
echo $PATH
On Mac OS X (by default) this will display the following colon separated search path:
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
So any executable in the listed directories can by run just by typing in their name. For example:
cat mytextfile.txt
This runs /bin/cat and displays mytextfile.txt to the terminal.
To run any other command that is not in the executable search path requires that you qualify the path to the executable. So say I had an executable called MyProgram in my home directory on Mac OS X I can fully qualify it like so:
/Users/oliver/MyProgram
If you are in a location that is near the program you wished to execute you can qualify the name with a partial path. For example, if MyProgram was in the directory /Users/oliver/MyProject I and I was in my home directory I can qualify the executable name like this, and have it execute:
MyProject/MyProgram
Or say I was in the directory /Users/oliver/MyProject2 and I wanted to execute /Users/oliver/MyProject/MyProgram I can use a relative path like this, to execute it:
../MyProject/MyProgram
Similarly if I am in the same directory as MyProgram I need to use a "current directory" relative path. The current directory you are in is the period character followed by a slash. For example:
./MyProgram
To determine which directory you are currently in use the pwd command.
If you are commonly putting programs in a place on your hard disk that you wish to run without having to qualify their names. For example, if you have a "bin" directory in your home directory for regularly used shell scripts of other programs it may be wise to alter your executable search path.
This can be does easily by either creating or editing the existing .bash_profile file in your home directory and adding the lines:
#!/bin/sh
export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
Here the tilde (~) character is being used as a shortcut for /Users/oliver. Also note that the hash bang (#!) line needs to be the first line of the file (if it doesn't already exist). Note also that this technique requires that your login shell be bash (the default on Mac OS X and most Linux distributions). Also note that if you want your programs installed in ~/bin to be used in preference to system executables your should reorder the export statement as follows:
export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
Do all of this in "Terminal".
To use the G++ compiler, you need to do this:
Navigate to the directory in which you stored the *.cpp file.
cd ~/programs/myprograms/
(the ~ is a shortcut for your home, i.e. /Users/Ryan/programs/myprograms/, replace with the location you actually used.)
Compile it
g++ input.cpp -o output.bin (output.bin can be anything with any extension, really. Extension .bin is just common on Unix.)
There should be nothing returned if it was successful, and that is okay. Generally you get returns on failures.
However, if you type ls, you will see the list of files in the same directory. For example, you would see the other folders, input.cpp and output.bin
From inside the directory, now execute it with ./outbut.bin
A compact way to go about doing that could be:
make foo && ./$_
It is nice to have a one-liner so you can just rerun your executable again easily.
Assuming the current directory is not in the path, the syntax is ./[name of the program].
For example ./a.out
To compile C or C++ programs, there is a common command:
make filename
./filename
make will build your source file into an executable file with the same name. But if you want to use the standard way, You could use the gcc compiler to build C programs and g++ for C++.
For C:
gcc filename.c
./a.out
For C++:
g++ filename.cpp
./a.out
Add the following to get the best warnings, and you will not regret it. If you can, compile using WISE (warning is error).
- Wall -pedantic -Weffc++ -Werror
Step 1 - create a cpp file using the command
touch test.cpp
Step 2 - Run this command
g++ test.cpp
Step 3 - Run your cpp file
./a.out
I am on a new MacBook Pro with the Apple M1 Pro chip. I have my Xcode installed - both IDE and command line tools. This is how it worked for me:
g++ one.cpp -o one
./one
Use a makefile. Even for very small (= one-file) projects, the effort is probably worth it because you can have several sets of compiler settings to test things. Debugging and deployment works much easier this way.
Read the make manual. It seems quite long at first glance, but most sections you can just skim over. All in all, it took me a few hours and made me much more productive.
I found this link with directions:
http://www.wesg.ca/2007/11/how-to-write-and-compile-c-programs-on-mac-os-x/
Basically you do:
gcc hello.c
./a.out (or with the output file of the first command)
In order to compile and run C++ source code from a Mac terminal, one needs to do the following:
If the path of .cpp file is somePath/fileName.cpp, first go the directory with path somePath
To compile fileName.cpp, type c++ fileName.cpp -o fileName
To run the program, type ./fileName
Just enter in the directory in which your .c/.cpp file is.
For compiling and running C code.
gcc filename.c
./a.out filename.c
For compiling and running C++ code.
g++ filename.cpp
./a.out filename.cpp
You need to go into the folder where you have saved your file.
To compile the code: gcc fileName
You can also use the g++ fileName
This will compile your code and create a binary.
Now look for the binary in the same folder and run it.
For running C++ files, run the below command, assuming the file name is "main.cpp".
Compile to make an object file from C++ file.
g++ -c main.cpp -o main.o
Since #include <conio.h> is not supported on macOS, we should use its alternative which is supported on Mac. That is #include <curses.h>. Now the object file needs to be converted to an executable file. To use file curses.h, we have to use library -lcurses.
g++ -o main main.o -lcurses
Now run the executable.
./main
Running a .C file using the terminal is a two-step process.
The first step is to type gcc in the terminal and drop the .C file to the terminal, and then press Enter:
gcc /Desktop/test.c
In the second step, run the following command:
~/a.out