GCC, an acronym standing for GNU Compiler Collection, is a collection of compilers for programming languages including Java, C, and C++. In this guide, we will show you how to install GCC compilers and related tools in Ubuntu and Debian
Install GCC Compiler using apt
The first step in installing GCC compiler is to update and upgrade the system. This can be done in a single command on the terminal as shown
# sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Next, install the build-essential package. The build-essential package contains a collection of packages which are considered crucial for building Ubuntu packages. This includes the GCC compiler, make and other essential tools.
To install the build-essential package run
# sudo apt install build-essential
Sample Output
Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done build-essential is already the newest version.
Verifying 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 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.10) 5.4.0 20160609 Copyright (C) 2015 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
Output
GNU Make 3.81 Copyright (C) 2006 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. This program built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Next, we are going to install the dev man pages on Ubuntu/Debian distributions
Installation of dev man pages
To install the dev man pages run the following command
sudo apt-get install manpages-dev man-db manpages-posix-dev
Sample Output
Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done manpages-dev is already the newest version. manpages-dev set to manually installed. man-db is already the newest version. The following extra packages will be installed: manpages-posix The following NEW packages will be installed: manpages-posix manpages-posix-dev 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 2,291 kB of archives. After this operation, 6,459 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
To view library calls, run the following commands
# man 3 scanf
Output
# man 2 execve
Output
# man 2 fork
Output
Now that we have confirmed 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
Output
Finally, run it as shown
./test
Output
Hello world !
And that's it! We have successfully installed, tested and verified that our GCC compiler is working! Thank you for taking time in this tutorial on how to install GCC compilers on Ubuntu. Feel free to share on your social media handles. Your feedback is very welcome.
