What is the difference between g++ and gcc? Which ones should be used for general c++ development?
gcc
and g++
are compiler-drivers of the GNU Compiler Collection (which was once upon a time just the GNU C Compiler).
Even though they automatically determine which backends (cc1
cc1plus
...) to call depending on the file-type, unless overridden with -x language
, they have some differences.
The probably most important difference in their defaults is which libraries they link against automatically.
According to GCC's online documentation link options and how g++ is invoked, g++
is equivalent to gcc -xc++ -lstdc++ -shared-libgcc
(the 1st is a compiler option, the 2nd two are linker options). This can be checked by running both with the -v
option (it displays the backend toolchain commands being run).
GCC: GNU Compiler Collection
gcc: GNU C Compiler
g++: GNU C++ Compiler
The main differences:
Extra Macros when compiling *.cpp files:
#define __GXX_WEAK__ 1
#define __cplusplus 1
#define __DEPRECATED 1
#define __GNUG__ 4
#define __EXCEPTIONS 1
#define __private_extern__ extern