GNUC

The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of compilers produced for various programming languages by the GNU Project. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain. As well as being the official compiler of the GNU system, GCC has been adopted as the standard compiler by most other modern Unix-like computer operating systems, including Linux, the BSD family and Mac OS X. GCC has been ported to a wide variety of computer architectures, and is widely deployed as a tool in commercial, proprietary and closed source software development environments. GCC is also used in popular embedded platforms like Symbian[1], Playstation and Sega Dreamcast.[citation needed]

Originally named the GNU C Compiler, because it only handled the C programming language, GCC 1.0 was released in 1987, and the compiler was extended to compile C++ in December of that year.[2] Front ends were later developed for Fortran, Pascal, Objective C, Java, and Ada, among others.[3]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL). GCC is free software.