gmqcc/doc/gmqcc.1

.\" Process with groff -man -Tascii file.3
.TH GMQCC 1 2012-07-12 "" "gmqcc Manual"
.SH NAME
gmqcc \- A Quake C compiler built from the NIH realm of sarcastic wit
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B gmqcc
[\fIOPTIONS\fR] [\fIfiles...\fR]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Traditionally, a QC compiler reads the file \fIprogs.src\fR which
in its first line contains the output filename, and the rest is a
list of QC source files that are to be compiled in order.
\fBgmqcc\fR optionally takes options to specify the output and
input files on the commandline, and also accepts assembly files.
.SH OPTIONS
\fBgmqcc\fR mostly tries to mimick gcc's commandline handling, though
there are also traditional long-options available.
.TP
.B "-h, --help"
Show a usage message and exit.
.TP
.B "-debug"
Turn on some compiler debugging mechanisms.
.TP
.B "-memchk"
Turn on compiler mem-check. (Shows allocations and checks for leaks.)
.TP
.BI "-o, --output=" filename
Specify the output filename. Defaults to progs.dat. This will overwrite
the output file listed in a \fIprogs.src\fR file in case such a file is used.
.TP
.BI "-O" number
Specify the optimization level
.RS
.IP 3
Highest optimization level
.IP 2
Default optimization level
.IP 1
Minimal optimization level
.IP 0
Disable optimization entirely
.RE
.TP
.BI "-O" name "\fR, " "" -Ono- name
Enable or disable a specific optimization. Note that these options
must be used after setting the optimization level, otherwise they'll
be overwritten.
.TP
.B -Ohelp
List all possible optimizations and the optimization level they're
activated at.
.TP
.BI -W warning "\fR, " "" -Wno- warning
Enable or disable a warning.
.TP
.B -Wall
Enable all warnings. Overrides preceding -W parameters.
.TP
.BR -Werror ", " -Wno-error
Controls whether or not all warnings should be treated as errors.
.TP
.BI -Werror- warning "\fR, " "" -Wno-error- warning
Controls whether a specific warning should be an error.
.TP
.B -Whelp
List all possible warn flags.
.TP
.BI -f flag "\fR, " "" -fno- flag
Enable or disable a specific compile flag. See the list of flags
below.
.TP
.B -fhelp
List all possible compile flags.
.TP
.B -nocolor
Disables colored output
.TP
.BI -config= file
Use an ini file to read all the -O, -W and -f flag from. See the
CONFIG section about the file format.
.TP
.BI "-redirout=" file
Redirects standard output to a \fIfile\fR
.TP
.BI "-redirerr=" file
Redirects standard error to a \fIfile\fR
.TP
.BI "-std=" standard
Use the specified standard for parsing QC code. The following standards
are available:
.IR gmqcc , qcc , fteqcc
Selecting a standard also implies some -f options and behaves as if
those options have been written right after the -std option, meaning
if you changed them before the -std option, you're now overwriting
them.
.sp
.BR -std=gmqcc " includes:"
.in +4
-fadjust-vector-fields
.in
.BR -std=qcc " includes:"
.in +4
.nf
-fassign-function-types
-f\fIno-\fRadjust-vector-fields
.fi
.in
.BR -std=fteqcc " includes:"
.in +4
.nf
-fftepp
-ftranslatable-strings
-fassign-function-types
-Wternary-precedence
-f\fIno-\fRadjust-vector-fields
-f\fIno-\fRcorrect-ternary
.fi
.in
.SH COMPILE WARNINGS
.TP
.B -Wunused-variable
Generate a warning about variables which are declared but never used.
This can be avoided by adding the \fInoref\fR keyword in front of the
variable declaration. Additionally a complete section of unreferenced
variables can be opened using \fI#pragma noref 1\fR, and closed via
\fI#pragma noref 0\fR.
.TP
.B -Wused-uninitialized
Generate a warning if it is possible that a variable can be used
without prior initialization. Note that this warning is not
necessarily reliable if the initialization happens only under certain
conditions. The other way is \fInot\fR possible: that the warning is
\fInot\fR generated when uninitialized use \fIis possible\fR.
.TP
.B -Wunknown-control-sequence
Generate an error when an unrecognized control sequence in a string is
used. Meaning: when there's a character after a backslash in a string
which has no known meaning.
.TP
.B -Wextensions
Warn when using special extensions which are not part of the selected
standard.
.TP
.B -Wfield-redeclared
Generally QC compilers ignore redeclaration of fields. Here you can
optionally enable a warning.
.TP
.B -Wmissing-return-values
Functions which aren't of type \fIvoid\fR will warn if it possible to
reach the end without returning an actual value.
.TP
.B -Wtoo-few-parameters
Warn about a function call with fewer parameters than the function
expects.
.TP
.B -Wlocal-shadows
Warn when a locally declared variable shadows variable.
.TP
.B -Wlocal-constants
Warn when the initialization of a local variable turns the variable
into a constant. This is default behaviour unless
\fI-finitialized-nonconstants\fR is used.
.TP
.B -Wvoid-variables
There are only 2 known global variables of type void: end_sys_globals
and end_sys_fields. Any other void-variable will warn.
.TP
.B -Wimplicit-function-pointer
A global function which is not declared with the \fIvar\fR keyword is
expected to have an implementing body, or be a builtin. If neither is
the case, it implicitly becomes a function pointer, and a warning is
generated.
.TP
.B -Wvariadic-function
Currently there's no way for an in QC implemented function to access
variadic parameters. If a function with variadic parameters has an
implementing body, a warning will be generated.
.TP
.B -Wframe-macros
Generate warnings about \fI$frame\fR commands, for instance about
duplicate frame definitions.
.TP
.B -Weffectless-statement
Warn about statements which have no effect. Any expression which does
not call a function or assigns a variable.
.TP
.B -Wend-sys-fields
The \fIend_sys_fields\fR variable is supposed to be a global variable
of type \fIvoid\fR. It is also recognized as a \fIfield\fR but this
will generate a warning.
.TP
.B -Wassign-function-types
Warn when assigning to a function pointer with an unmatching
signature. This usually happens in cases like assigning the null
function to an entity's .think function pointer.
.TP
.B -Wpreprocessor
Enable warnings coming from the preprocessor. Like duplicate macro
declarations. This warning triggers when there's a problem with the
way the preprocessor has been used, it will \fBnot\fR affect warnings
generated with the '#warning' directive. See -Wcpp.
.TP
.B -Wcpp
Show warnings created using the preprocessor's '#warning' directive.
.TP
.B -Wmultifile-if
Warn if there's a preprocessor \fI#if\fR spanning across several
files.
.TP
.B -Wdouble-declaration
Warn about multiple declarations of globals. This seems pretty common
in QC code so you probably do not want this unless you want to clean
up your code.
.TP
.B -Wconst-var
The combination of \fIconst\fR and \fIvar\fR is not illegal, however
different compilers may handle them differently. We were told, the
intention is to create a function-pointer which is not assignable.
This is exactly how we interpret it. However for this interpretation
the \fIvar\fR keyword is considered superfluous (and philosophically
wrong), so it is possible to generate a warning about this.
.TP
.B -Wmultibyte-character
Warn about multibyte character constants, they do not work right now.
.TP
.B -Wternary-precedence
Warn if a ternary expression which contains a comma operator is used
without enclosing parenthesis, since this is most likely not what you
actually want. We recommend the \fI-fcorrect-ternary\fR option.
.TP
.B -Wunknown-pragmas
Warn when encountering an unrecognized \fI#pragma\fR line.
.TP
.B -Wunreachable-code
Warn about unreachable code. That is: code after a return statement,
or code after a call to a function marked as 'noreturn'.
.TP
.B -Wdebug
Enable some warnings added in order to help debugging in the compiler.
You won't need this.
.B -Wunknown-attribute
Warn on an unknown attribute. The warning will inlclude only the first
token inside the enclosing attribute-brackets. This may change when
the actual attribute syntax is better defined.
.SH COMPILE FLAGS
.TP
.B -fdarkplaces-string-table-bug
Add some additional characters to the string table in order to
compensate for a wrong boundcheck in some specific version of the
darkplaces engine.
.TP
.B -fadjust-vector-fields
When assigning to field pointers of type \fI.vector\fR the common
behaviour in compilers like \fIfteqcc\fR is to only assign the
x-component of the pointer. This means that you can use the vector as
such, but you cannot use its y and z components directly. This flag
fixes this behaviour. Before using it make sure your code does not
depend on the buggy behaviour.
.TP
.B -fftepp
Enable a partially fteqcc-compatible preprocessor. It supports all the
features used in the Xonotic codebase. If you need more, write a
ticket.
.TP
.B -frelaxed-switch
Allow switch cases to use non constant variables.
.TP
.B -fshort-logic
Perform early out in logical AND and OR expressions. The final result
will be either a 0 or a 1, see the next flag for more possibilities.
.TP
.B -fperl-logic
In many languages, logical expressions perform early out in a special
way: If the left operand of an AND yeilds true, or the one of an OR
yields false, the complete expression evaluates to the right side.
Thus \fItrue && 5\fI evaluates to 5 rather than 1.
.TP
.B -ftranslatable-strings
Enable the underscore intrinsic: Using \fI_("A string constant")\fR
will cause the string immediate to get a name with a "dotranslate_"
prefix. The darkplaces engine recognizes these and translates them in
a way similar to how gettext works.
.TP
.B -finitialized-nonconstants
Don't implicitly convert initialized variables to constants. With this
flag, the \fIconst\fR keyword is required to make a constant.
.TP
.B -fassign-function-types
If this flag is not set, (and it is set by default in the qcc and
fteqcc standards), assigning function pointers of mismatching
signatures will result in an error rather than a warning.
.TP
.B -flno
Produce a linenumber file along with the output .dat file.
.TP
.B -fcorrect-ternary
Use C's operator precedence for ternary expressions. Unless your code
depends on fteqcc-compatible behaviour, you'll want to use thi
soption.
.TP
.B -fsingle-vector-defs
Normally vectors generate 4 defs, once for the vector, and once for
its components with _x, _y, _z suffixes. This option
prevents components from being listed.
.TP
.B -fcorrect-logic
Most QC compilers translate if(a_vector) directly as an IF on the
vector, which means only the x-component is checked. This causes
vectors to be cast to actual booleans via a NOT_V and, if necessary, a
NOT_F chained to it.
.in +4
.nf
if (a_vector) // becomes
if not(!a_vector)
// likewise
a = a_vector && a_float // becomes
a = !!a_vector && a_float
.fi
.in
.TP
.B -ftrue-empty-strings
An empty string is considered to be true everywhere. The NOT_S
instruction usually considers an empty string to be false, this option
effectively causes the unary not in strings to use NOT_F instead.
.TP
.B -ffalse-empty-strings
An empty string is considered to be false everywhere. This means loops
and if statements which depend on a string will perform a NOT_S
instruction on the string before using it.
.TP
.B -futf8
Enable utf8 characters. This allows utf-8 encoded character constants,
and escape sequence codepoints in the valid utf-8 range. Effectively
enabling escape sequences like '\\{x2211}'.
.SH OPTIMIZATIONS
.TP
.B -Opeephole
Some general peephole optimizations. For instance the code `a = b + c`
typically generates 2 instructions, an ADD and a STORE. This
optimization removes the STORE and lets the ADD write directly into A.
.TP
.B -Otail-recursion
Tail recursive function calls will be turned into loops to avoid the
overhead of the CALL and RETURN instructions.
.TP
.B -Ooverlap-locals
Make all functions which use neither local arrays nor have locals
which are seen as possibly uninitialized use the same local section.
This should be pretty safe compared to other compilers which do not
check for uninitialized values properly. The problem is that there's
QC code out there which really doesn't initialize some values. This is
fine as long as this kind of optimization isn't used, but also, only
as long as the functions cannot be called in a recursive manner. Since
it's hard to know whether or not an array is actually fully
initialized, especially when initializing it via a loop, we assume
functions with arrays to be too dangerous for this optimization.
.TP
.B -Olocal-temps
This promotes locally declared variables to "temps". Meaning when a
temporary result of an operation has to be stored somewhere, a local
variable which is not 'alive' at that point can be used to keep the
result. This can reduce the size of the global section.
This will not have declared variables overlap, even if it was
possible.
.SH CONFIG
The configuration file is similar to regular .ini files. Comments
start with hashtags or semicolons, sections are written in square
brackets and in each section there can be arbitrary many key-value
pairs.
.sp
There are 3 sections currently:
.IR flags ", " warnings ", and " optimizations .
They contain a list of boolean values of the form `VARNAME = true` or
`VARNAME = false`. The variable names are the same as for the
corresponding -W, -f or -O flag written with only capital letters and
dashes replaced by underscores.
.sp
Here's an example:
.in +4
.nf
# a GMQCC configuration file
[flags]
    FTEPP = true
    ADJUST_VECTOR_FIELDS = false
    LNO = true

[warnings]
    UNUSED_VARIABLE = false
    USED_UNINITIALIZED = true

[optimizations]
    PEEPHOLE = true
    TAIL_RECURSION = true
.fi
.in
.SH BUGS
Please report bugs on <http://github.com/graphitemaster/gmqcc/issues>,
or see <http://graphitemaster.github.com/gmqcc> on how to contact us.
.SH FILES
.TP 20
.B gmqcc.ini.example
A documented example for a gmqcc.ini file.
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR qcvm (1)
.SH AUTHOR
See <http://graphitemaster.github.com/gmqcc>.