This week I listened a podcast called Internals of GCC, it
was really interesting and unexpected, since they explained a how GCC works. GCC
is a really commonly used and famous compiler; it stands for GNU Compiler
Collection, but I never gave it a thought so I could understand how it works.
This compiler can work with several programming languages, not as I thought at
first, since I had only used it before with C language.
That’s why GCC works on different layers, on the top there’s
the Front-end, which transforms code so it can be ready for the next layer, it
turns code written by someone into a tree, since different languages are
supported and not all of them have the same functionalities this step intends
to make them all logically similar. The most important part into this process
of compiling is the SAT, this stands for Syntax Abstract Tree, every function
or process must be handled in a different section.
Then the data is passed
to the next layer, which takes this tree, and turns it into a local and more
simplified one, getting an internal or local tree that contains the entire
logic. At the end, the code is passed to the Back-end, which transforms the
date into code assembly code and its architecture dependent, this layer can even
make an improvement into the code.
This podcast was
really interesting, because it was able to understand a little bit more of how
the compiling process of such a used compiler works, so other compilers might
use the same logic, it was really helpful, I could get a better understanding of
the process we’re making to code our project, because both, guest and host, had
good skills handling the flow of the information and making clear every point.
