GCC: The Complete Reference

✍ Scribed by Arthur Griffith

• Book ID: 127435036
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 6 MB
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library
• City: New York
• ISBN-13: 9780072228168
• DOI: 10.1036/0072228164

✦ Synopsis

This is a useful book for those who need in-depth information on GCC, but needs more effort in both writing and editing. There are numerous copy-paste-itis errors, which shows that it was not properly proof-read. It also has passages in various chapters which are nearly duplicates of each other, e.g., two "Multiple Source Files to Executable" passages (pages 70 & 106), and five on "Creating a Shared Library" (73, 110, 132, 144, 165). Admittedly some of the details vary from language to language, but there's no explanation of what these differences are; the passages are merely repeated with minor changes.

There are larger but similar problems with the organization of the book.  For example, I would have greatly preferred a logically-organized listing of command-line options to a merely alphabetical order.  A reader who wants an alphabetical organization can already get it from the manual.  This arrangement also leads to problems with the exposition, e.g., the definition of -MQ assumes the definition of -MT, which it precedes.  There are other problems with the order of exposition; for example, there's a two and a half page sample of RTL code on 367-9, which is incomprehensible before the explanation of RTL on pp. 387-417, and badly in need of more detailed exposition even afterwards. 

(2/27/09: The author never responded to my list of errata, so I've posted it at http://pobox.com/~flash/errata/GCC_The_Complete_Reference_Errata.html)