Where are include files stored - Ubuntu Linux GCC

Question

So  when we do the following    include  lt stdio h gt    versus    include  myFile h    the compiler  GCC in my case  knows where that stdio h  and even the object file  are located on my hard drive  It just utilizes the files with no interaction from me   I think that on my Ubuntu Linux machine the files are stored at  usr include   How does the compiler know where to look for these files  Is this configurable or is this just the expected default  Where would I look for this configuration   Since I m asking a question on these include files  what are the source of the files  I know this might be fuzzy in the Linux community but who manages these  Who would provide and manage the same files for a Windows compiler   I was always under the impression that they come with the compiler but that was an assumption

User · Accepted Answer

See here   Search Path  Summary    include  lt stdio h gt    When the include file is in brackets the preprocessor first searches in paths specified via the -I flag   Then it searches the standard include paths  see the above link  and use the -v flag to test on your system     include  myFile h    When the include file is in quotes the preprocessor first searches in the current directory  then paths specified by -iquote  then -I paths  then the standard paths   -nostdinc can be used to prevent the preprocessor from searching the standard paths at all   Environment variables can also be used to add search paths   When compiling if you use the -v flag you can see the search paths used

User · Answer

The   include files  of gcc are stored in  usr include   The standard include files of g   are stored in  usr include c

User · Answer

gcc is a rich and complex  orchestrating  program that calls many other programs to perform its duties  For the specific purpose of seeing where  include  goo  and  include  lt zap gt  will search on your system  I recommend     touch a c   gcc -v -E a c       include       search starts here   include  lt     gt  search starts here    usr local include   usr lib gcc i686-apple-darwin9 4 0 1 include   usr include   System Library Frameworks  framework directory    Library Frameworks  framework directory  End of search list    1  a c    This is one way to see the search lists for included files  including  if any  directories into which  include       will look but  include  lt     gt  won t  This specific list I m showing is actually on Mac OS X  aka Darwin  but the commands I recommend will show you the search lists  as well as interesting configuration details that I ve replaced with     here -  on any system on which gcc runs properly

User · Answer

Karl answered your search-path question  but as far as the  source of the files  goes  one thing to be aware of is that if you install the libfoo package and want to do some development with it  i e   use its headers   you will also need to install libfoo-dev  The standard library header files are already in  usr include  as you saw   Note that some libraries with a lot of headers will install them to a subdirectory  e g    usr include openssl  To include one of those  just provide the path without the  usr include part  for example    include  lt openssl aes h gt

[linux] Where are include files stored - Ubuntu Linux, GCC

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