In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GCC on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) formerly “GNU C Compiler”, is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project. The current version is GCC 9.3, released on March 12, 2020, supporting several major programming languages: C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, D, Go, and BRIG (HSAIL).
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of GCC the C compiler on an Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install GCC on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing GCC on Ubuntu 20.04.
To set up GCC on Linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the most convenient way is by installing the entire development package build-essential:
sudo apt install build-essential
You may also want to install the manual pages about using GNU/Linux for development:
sudo apt install manpages-dev
Confirm your installation by checking for the GCC version:
$ gcc --version gcc (Ubuntu 9.4.0-10ubuntu2) 9.4.0 Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
To test the C compiler, let’s create a small program like the below:
nano hello.c
// hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello, world!\n");
return 0;
}
Compile this file with GCC:
gcc hello.c -o hello ./hello
The program will result:
Hello World!
Congratulations! You have successfully installed GCC. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing GCC (build-essential) on your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official GCC website.
