GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) is a compiler system developed to support various programming languages. It is a standard compiler used in most projects related to GNU and Linux, for example, the Linux kernel. The objective of this tutorial is to install GCC, the C compiler, on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. Installation of GCC can be achieved by using the apt install command as you will see below.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install GCC compiler
- How to Check C compiler version
- How to Compile basic C program from source code
- How to run C program
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
| Software | GCC |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions | # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install GCC the C compiler on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions
Although you can install the C compiler separately by installation of the gcc package, the recommended way to install the C compiler on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish is by installation of the entire development package build-essential.
- Open a command line terminal and install C compiler by installation of the development package
build-essential:$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install build-essential DO YOU NEED MULTIPLE C AND/OR C++ COMPILER VERSIONS?
Visit our other tutorial on How to switch between multiple GCC and G++ compiler versions on Ubuntu 22.04 to see how to install multiple compiler versions on the same Ubuntu system. - Check C compiler version to verify a successful installation:$ gcc –version
- We can verify that our GCC compiler works by creating a basic C code source. For example let’s create a hello world C program. Save the following code as
hello.ctext file:#include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; }Copy - Compile and execute the
hello.cC code:$ gcc -o hello hello.c $ ./hello Hello, World!
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to install GCC, the very simple C compiler on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. We also learned how to create a simple Hello World C program in order to test the new compiler.