How do you get assembler output from C/C++ source in gcc?

Question

How does one do this?

If I want to analyze how something is getting compiled, how would I get the emitted assembly code?

Answer 1

Use the -S option:

gcc -S program.c

Answer 2

-save-temps

This was mentioned at https://stackoverflow.com/a/17083009/895245 but let me further exemplify it.

The big advantage of this option over -S is that it is very easy to add it to any build script, without interfering much in the build itself.

When you do:

gcc -save-temps -c -o main.o main.c

main.c

#define INC 1

int myfunc(int i) {
    return i + INC;
}

and now, besides the normal output main.o, the current working directory also contains the following files:

• main.i is a bonus and contains the preprossessed file:

  # 1 "main.c"
  # 1 "<built-in>"
  # 1 "<command-line>"
  # 31 "<command-line>"
  # 1 "/usr/include/stdc-predef.h" 1 3 4
  # 32 "<command-line>" 2
  # 1 "main.c"
  
  
  int myfunc(int i) {
      return i + 1;
  }
  

• main.s contains the desired generated assembly:

      .file   "main.c"
      .text
      .globl  myfunc
      .type   myfunc, @function
  myfunc:
  .LFB0:
      .cfi_startproc
      pushq   %rbp
      .cfi_def_cfa_offset 16
      .cfi_offset 6, -16
      movq    %rsp, %rbp
      .cfi_def_cfa_register 6
      movl    %edi, -4(%rbp)
      movl    -4(%rbp), %eax
      addl    $1, %eax
      popq    %rbp
      .cfi_def_cfa 7, 8
      ret
      .cfi_endproc
  .LFE0:
      .size   myfunc, .-myfunc
      .ident  "GCC: (Ubuntu 8.3.0-6ubuntu1) 8.3.0"
      .section    .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits
  

If you want to do it for a large number of files, consider using instead:

 -save-temps=obj

which saves the intermediate files to the same directory as the -o object output instead of the current working directory, thus avoiding potential basename conflicts.

Another cool thing about this option is if you add -v:

gcc -save-temps -c -o main.o -v main.c

it actually shows the explicit files being used instead of ugly temporaries under /tmp, so it is easy to know exactly what is going on, which includes the preprocessing / compilation / assembly steps:

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/8/cc1 -E -quiet -v -imultiarch x86_64-linux-gnu main.c -mtune=generic -march=x86-64 -fpch-preprocess -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Wformat-security -o main.i
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/8/cc1 -fpreprocessed main.i -quiet -dumpbase main.c -mtune=generic -march=x86-64 -auxbase-strip main.o -version -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Wformat-security -o main.s
as -v --64 -o main.o main.s

Tested in Ubuntu 19.04 amd64, GCC 8.3.0.

CMake predefined targets

CMake automatically provides a targets for the preprocessed file:

make help

shows us that we can do:

make main.s

and that target runs:

Compiling C source to assembly CMakeFiles/main.dir/main.c.s
/usr/bin/cc    -S /home/ciro/hello/main.c -o CMakeFiles/main.dir/main.c.s

so the file can be seen at CMakeFiles/main.dir/main.c.s

Tested on cmake 3.16.1.

Answer 3

As mentioned before, look at the -S flag.

It's also worth looking at the '-fdump-tree' family of flags, in particular '-fdump-tree-all', which lets you see some of gcc's intermediate forms. These can often be more readable than assembler (at least to me), and let you see how optimisation passes perform.

Answer 4

From: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/v2faq/faq8_20.html

gcc -c -g -Wa,-a,-ad [other GCC options] foo.c > foo.lst

in alternative to PhirePhly's answer Or just use -S as everyone said.

Answer 5

This will generate assembly code with the C code + line numbers interweaved, to more easily see which lines generate what code:

# create assembler code:
g++ -S -fverbose-asm -g -O2 test.cc -o test.s
# create asm interlaced with source lines:
as -alhnd test.s > test.lst

Found in Algorithms for programmers, page 3 (which is the overall 15th page of the PDF).

Answer 6

recently i wanted to know the assembly of each functions in a program
this is how i did it.

$ gcc main.c                      // main.c source file
$ gdb a.exe                       // gdb a.out in linux
  (gdb) disass main               // note here main is a function
                                  // similary it can be done for other functions