Confusion in command line tools

Question

I know about GCC and G++. GCC is for compiling C programs, and G++ is for compiling C++ programs, both created and are part of GNU. But I have three misunderstandings. 1, I don't know what is the difference between clang-llvm and clang. 2, I have heard about GPP as well, and I am confused about the difference between G++ and GPP, please explain to me like I'm a child. 3, I know a few compilers: the first one is GCC, the second is Clang, and the third is MSVC. Now here is when the confusion kindles, I heard that apple have created their own compiler, and if I wanted to install GCC and G++, I don't know how to install it, if I install command line tools, I am sure it will install Apple's compilers, but the things is that GCC and G++ are not made by Apple.

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Posted by

Jimmeh

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I also want to know if I installed G++ with brew, would it be different than if it is installed by command line tools.

—
Jimmeh

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Answer 1

Just use clang (or clang++).
I've never heard of "GPP".
Apple have their own version of clang, which differs slightly from the "upstream" clang.

The easiest way to install gcc/g++ is to use Homebrew.

Posted by

endecotp

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Answer 2

Just FYI, the specific names of the tool you run generally doesn’t matter:

The clang command actually points to a compiler driver that does the right thing depending on the extension. So if you pass it a main.c file it’ll compile it as C but if you pass it a main.cpp file it’ll use C++:
```
% clang main.c 
% clang main.cpp
```
By default the system includes cc and gcc as alias for clang. So, even though my system just has the Apple tools installed, I can run all of the following:
```
% clang main.c
% gcc main.c
% cc main.c
```

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eskimo

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Confusion in command line tools

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