Compiler Framework - 2024.1 English

This section discusses the common features of the MicroBlaze™ and MicroBlaze™ -V, and Cortex® A9, A53, A72, and R5 processor compilers. The following figure displays the GNU tool flow.

Figure 1. GNU Tool Flow

The GNU compiler is a wrapper that calls the following executables:

Pre-processor (cpp0)

This is the first pass invoked by the compiler. The pre-processor replaces all macros with definitions as defined in the source and header files.

Machine and language specific compiler

This compiler works on the pre-processed code, which is the output of the first stage. The language-specific compiler is one of the following:

C Compiler (cc1)

The compiler responsible for most of the optimizations done on the input C code and for generating assembly code.

C++ Compiler (cc1plus)

The compiler responsible for most of the optimizations done on the input C++ code and for generating assembly code.

Assembler

The assembly code has mnemonics in assembly language. The assembler converts these to machine language. The assembler also resolves some of the labels generated by the compiler. It creates an object file which is passed on to the linker. The assembler executables are named as follows:

• mb-as for MicroBlaze and MicroBlaze™ -V
• arm-none-eabi-as for Cortex A9 cores
• aarch64-none-elf-as for Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A72
• armr5-none-eabi-as for Cortex-R5F

Linker

Links all the object files generated by the assembler. If libraries are provided on the command line, the linker resolves some of the undefined references in the code by linking in some of the functions from the assembler. The linker executables named as follows:

• mb-ld for MicroBlaze
• arm-none-eabi-ld for Cortex A9 cores
• aarch64-none-elf-ld for Cortex-A53and Cortex-A72
• armr5-none-eabi-ld for Cortex-R5F

Executable options are described in the following sections:

• Commonly Used Compiler Options: Quick Reference
• Linker Options
• MicroBlaze Compiler Usage and Options
• MicroBlaze Linker Options
• Arm Compiler Usage and Options