
GCC, an acronym standing for GNU Compiler Collection, is a collection of compilers for programming languages including C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D.
In this guide, we learn how to install GCC on Ubuntu 20.04.
Step 1: Update the system
First, make sure to update your Ubuntu system.
$ sudo apt update
Step 2: Install GCC on Ubuntu
Ubuntu default repository contains a meta-package named build-essential. This package contains GNU debugger, g++/GNU compiler collection other essential tools.
To install the build-essential package on Ubuntu, type:
$ sudo apt install build-essential
Step 3: Verifying GCC Installation
To verify that you have installed gcc and make run the command below
$ whereis gcc make
Output
gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz
make: /usr/bin/make /usr/share/man/man1/make.1posix.gz /usr/share/man/man1/make.1.gz
Alternatively, you can run
$ gcc --version
Output
gcc (Ubuntu 9.3.0-17ubuntu1~20.04) 9.3.0
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
To get the version of make run
make -v
or
make --version
Next, we are going to install the dev man pages on Ubuntu distributions
Installation of dev man pages
To install the dev man pages run the following command
sudo apt install manpages-dev man-db manpages-posix-dev
To view library calls, run the following commands
# man 3 scanf

# man 2 execve

# man 2 fork

Now that we have confirmed the successful installation of the compilers and main components, let's test the GNU GCC compiler
Testing the GCC compiler
Let's first create a simple C++ program
vim test_app.cpp
Add the following code
// Simple C++ program to display "Hello World"
// Header file for input output functions
#include
using namespace std;
// main function -
// where the execution of program begins
int main()
{
// prints hello world
cout<<"Hello World ! \n";
return 0;
}
Next, compile the code as follows
g++ test_app.cpp -o test
Be sure to find a file called test in your directory using the ls command.
ls -l

Finally, run it as shown
./test
Output
Hello world !
Conclusion
We have successfully installed GCC on Ubuntu and compiled a Hello World example.
Thanks for reading, please provide your suggestions and feedback in the comment section.