GCC(GNU Compiler Collection, version 4.6 was released a day ago) is a compiler available free under GPL by GNU Foundation. it is cross platform and is written using c/c++. Actually GCC has a major role in the growth of open source/Free Software world, in the past few years.
A majority of C/C++ programmers uses GCC, on Linux based operating systems as well as on Windows/Mac OS X. Since I uses Ubuntu 10.10 as my primary desktop; I know how important ,the gcc is, for programming Fun. GCC is mainly used as a compiler for C,C++,java,Fortran,Pascal,Ada,Objective-C.
A lot of extra features can be added with help of freely available plugins. GCC is one of the best compiler for c programmers.
New Features in GCC 4.6
- Support for GO Programming Language has been added
- New Optimizer Levels(-Ofast) has been introduced
- Improvements in compiler time and Memory Usage
- other platform specific improvements
GCC vs 4.6.0 has released(on March 25,2011). Go here for Complete details on the features of GCC.