Provided by: gcj-5_5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.12_amd64 
NAME
gcj - Ahead-of-time compiler for the Java language
SYNOPSIS
gcj [-Idir...] [-d dir...]
[--CLASSPATH=path] [--classpath=path]
[-foption...] [--encoding=name]
[--main=classname] [-Dname[=value]...]
[-C] [--resource resource-name] [-d directory]
[-Wwarn...]
sourcefile...
DESCRIPTION
As gcj is just another front end to gcc, it supports many of the same options as gcc. This manual only
documents the options specific to gcj.
OPTIONS
Input and output files
A gcj command is like a gcc command, in that it consists of a number of options and file names. The
following kinds of input file names are supported:
file.java
Java source files.
file.class
Java bytecode files.
file.zip
file.jar
An archive containing one or more ".class" files, all of which are compiled. The archive may be
compressed. Files in an archive which don't end with .class are treated as resource files; they are
compiled into the resulting object file as core: URLs.
@file
A file containing a whitespace-separated list of input file names. (Currently, these must all be
".java" source files, but that may change.) Each named file is compiled, just as if it had been on
the command line.
library.a
library.so
-llibname
Libraries to use when linking. See the gcc manual.
You can specify more than one input file on the gcj command line, in which case they will all be
compiled. If you specify a "-o FILENAME" option, all the input files will be compiled together,
producing a single output file, named FILENAME. This is allowed even when using "-S" or "-c", but not
when using "-C" or "--resource". (This is an extension beyond the what plain gcc allows.) (If more than
one input file is specified, all must currently be ".java" files, though we hope to fix this.)
Input Options
gcj has options to control where it looks to find files it needs. For instance, gcj might need to load a
class that is referenced by the file it has been asked to compile. Like other compilers for the Java
language, gcj has a notion of a class path. There are several options and environment variables which
can be used to manipulate the class path. When gcj looks for a given class, it searches the class path
looking for matching .class or .java file. gcj comes with a built-in class path which points at the
installed libgcj.jar, a file which contains all the standard classes.
In the text below, a directory or path component can refer either to an actual directory on the
filesystem, or to a .zip or .jar file, which gcj will search as if it is a directory.
-Idir
All directories specified by "-I" are kept in order and prepended to the class path constructed from
all the other options. Unless compatibility with tools like "javac" is important, we recommend
always using "-I" instead of the other options for manipulating the class path.
--classpath=path
This sets the class path to path, a colon-separated list of paths (on Windows-based systems, a
semicolon-separate list of paths). This does not override the builtin ("boot") search path.
--CLASSPATH=path
Deprecated synonym for "--classpath".
--bootclasspath=path
Where to find the standard builtin classes, such as "java.lang.String".
--extdirs=path
For each directory in the path, place the contents of that directory at the end of the class path.
CLASSPATH
This is an environment variable which holds a list of paths.
The final class path is constructed like so:
* First come all directories specified via "-I".
* If --classpath is specified, its value is appended. Otherwise, if the "CLASSPATH" environment
variable is specified, then its value is appended. Otherwise, the current directory (".") is
appended.
* If "--bootclasspath" was specified, append its value. Otherwise, append the built-in system
directory, libgcj.jar.
* Finally, if "--extdirs" was specified, append the contents of the specified directories at the end of
the class path. Otherwise, append the contents of the built-in extdirs at
"$(prefix)/share/java/ext".
The classfile built by gcj for the class "java.lang.Object" (and placed in "libgcj.jar") contains a
special zero length attribute "gnu.gcj.gcj-compiled". The compiler looks for this attribute when loading
"java.lang.Object" and will report an error if it isn't found, unless it compiles to bytecode (the option
"-fforce-classes-archive-check" can be used to override this behavior in this particular case.)
-fforce-classes-archive-check
This forces the compiler to always check for the special zero length attribute "gnu.gcj.gcj-compiled"
in "java.lang.Object" and issue an error if it isn't found.
-fsource=VERSION
This option is used to choose the source version accepted by gcj. The default is 1.5.
Encodings
The Java programming language uses Unicode throughout. In an effort to integrate well with other
locales, gcj allows .java files to be written using almost any encoding. gcj knows how to convert these
encodings into its internal encoding at compile time.
You can use the "--encoding=NAME" option to specify an encoding (of a particular character set) to use
for source files. If this is not specified, the default encoding comes from your current locale. If
your host system has insufficient locale support, then gcj assumes the default encoding to be the UTF-8
encoding of Unicode.
To implement "--encoding", gcj simply uses the host platform's "iconv" conversion routine. This means
that in practice gcj is limited by the capabilities of the host platform.
The names allowed for the argument "--encoding" vary from platform to platform (since they are not
standardized anywhere). However, gcj implements the encoding named UTF-8 internally, so if you choose to
use this for your source files you can be assured that it will work on every host.
Warnings
gcj implements several warnings. As with other generic gcc warnings, if an option of the form "-Wfoo"
enables a warning, then "-Wno-foo" will disable it. Here we've chosen to document the form of the
warning which will have an effect -- the default being the opposite of what is listed.
-Wredundant-modifiers
With this flag, gcj will warn about redundant modifiers. For instance, it will warn if an interface
method is declared "public".
-Wextraneous-semicolon
This causes gcj to warn about empty statements. Empty statements have been deprecated.
-Wno-out-of-date
This option will cause gcj not to warn when a source file is newer than its matching class file. By
default gcj will warn about this.
-Wno-deprecated
Warn if a deprecated class, method, or field is referred to.
-Wunused
This is the same as gcc's "-Wunused".
-Wall
This is the same as "-Wredundant-modifiers -Wextraneous-semicolon -Wunused".
Linking
To turn a Java application into an executable program, you need to link it with the needed libraries,
just as for C or C++. The linker by default looks for a global function named "main". Since Java does
not have global functions, and a collection of Java classes may have more than one class with a "main"
method, you need to let the linker know which of those "main" methods it should invoke when starting the
application. You can do that in any of these ways:
* Specify the class containing the desired "main" method when you link the application, using the
"--main" flag, described below.
* Link the Java package(s) into a shared library (dll) rather than an executable. Then invoke the
application using the "gij" program, making sure that "gij" can find the libraries it needs.
* Link the Java packages(s) with the flag "-lgij", which links in the "main" routine from the "gij"
command. This allows you to select the class whose "main" method you want to run when you run the
application. You can also use other "gij" flags, such as "-D" flags to set properties. Using the
"-lgij" library (rather than the "gij" program of the previous mechanism) has some advantages: it is
compatible with static linking, and does not require configuring or installing libraries.
These "gij" options relate to linking an executable:
--main=CLASSNAME
This option is used when linking to specify the name of the class whose "main" method should be
invoked when the resulting executable is run.
-Dname[=value]
This option can only be used with "--main". It defines a system property named name with value
value. If value is not specified then it defaults to the empty string. These system properties are
initialized at the program's startup and can be retrieved at runtime using the
"java.lang.System.getProperty" method.
-lgij
Create an application whose command-line processing is that of the "gij" command.
This option is an alternative to using "--main"; you cannot use both.
-static-libgcj
This option causes linking to be done against a static version of the libgcj runtime library. This
option is only available if corresponding linker support exists.
Caution: Static linking of libgcj may cause essential parts of libgcj to be omitted. Some parts of
libgcj use reflection to load classes at runtime. Since the linker does not see these references at
link time, it can omit the referred to classes. The result is usually (but not always) a
"ClassNotFoundException" being thrown at runtime. Caution must be used when using this option. For
more details see: <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Statically%20linking%20libgcj>
Code Generation
In addition to the many gcc options controlling code generation, gcj has several options specific to
itself.
-C This option is used to tell gcj to generate bytecode (.class files) rather than object code.
--resource resource-name
This option is used to tell gcj to compile the contents of a given file to object code so it may be
accessed at runtime with the core protocol handler as core:/resource-name. Note that resource-name
is the name of the resource as found at runtime; for instance, it could be used in a call to
"ResourceBundle.getBundle". The actual file name to be compiled this way must be specified
separately.
-ftarget=VERSION
This can be used with -C to choose the version of bytecode emitted by gcj. The default is 1.5. When
not generating bytecode, this option has no effect.
-d directory
When used with "-C", this causes all generated .class files to be put in the appropriate subdirectory
of directory. By default they will be put in subdirectories of the current working directory.
-fno-bounds-check
By default, gcj generates code which checks the bounds of all array indexing operations. With this
option, these checks are omitted, which can improve performance for code that uses arrays
extensively. Note that this can result in unpredictable behavior if the code in question actually
does violate array bounds constraints. It is safe to use this option if you are sure that your code
will never throw an "ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException".
-fno-store-check
Don't generate array store checks. When storing objects into arrays, a runtime check is normally
generated in order to ensure that the object is assignment compatible with the component type of the
array (which may not be known at compile-time). With this option, these checks are omitted. This
can improve performance for code which stores objects into arrays frequently. It is safe to use this
option if you are sure your code will never throw an "ArrayStoreException".
-fjni
With gcj there are two options for writing native methods: CNI and JNI. By default gcj assumes you
are using CNI. If you are compiling a class with native methods, and these methods are implemented
using JNI, then you must use "-fjni". This option causes gcj to generate stubs which will invoke the
underlying JNI methods.
-fno-assert
Don't recognize the "assert" keyword. This is for compatibility with older versions of the language
specification.
-fno-optimize-static-class-initialization
When the optimization level is greater or equal to "-O2", gcj will try to optimize the way calls into
the runtime are made to initialize static classes upon their first use (this optimization isn't
carried out if "-C" was specified.) When compiling to native code,
"-fno-optimize-static-class-initialization" will turn this optimization off, regardless of the
optimization level in use.
--disable-assertions[=class-or-package]
Don't include code for checking assertions in the compiled code. If "=class-or-package" is missing
disables assertion code generation for all classes, unless overridden by a more specific
"--enable-assertions" flag. If class-or-package is a class name, only disables generating assertion
checks within the named class or its inner classes. If class-or-package is a package name, disables
generating assertion checks within the named package or a subpackage.
By default, assertions are enabled when generating class files or when not optimizing, and disabled
when generating optimized binaries.
--enable-assertions[=class-or-package]
Generates code to check assertions. The option is perhaps misnamed, as you still need to turn on
assertion checking at run-time, and we don't support any easy way to do that. So this flag isn't
very useful yet, except to partially override "--disable-assertions".
-findirect-dispatch
gcj has a special binary compatibility ABI, which is enabled by the "-findirect-dispatch" option. In
this mode, the code generated by gcj honors the binary compatibility guarantees in the Java Language
Specification, and the resulting object files do not need to be directly linked against their
dependencies. Instead, all dependencies are looked up at runtime. This allows free mixing of
interpreted and compiled code.
Note that, at present, "-findirect-dispatch" can only be used when compiling .class files. It will
not work when compiling from source. CNI also does not yet work with the binary compatibility ABI.
These restrictions will be lifted in some future release.
However, if you compile CNI code with the standard ABI, you can call it from code built with the
binary compatibility ABI.
-fbootstrap-classes
This option can be use to tell "libgcj" that the compiled classes should be loaded by the bootstrap
loader, not the system class loader. By default, if you compile a class and link it into an
executable, it will be treated as if it was loaded using the system class loader. This is
convenient, as it means that things like "Class.forName()" will search CLASSPATH to find the desired
class.
-freduced-reflection
This option causes the code generated by gcj to contain a reduced amount of the class meta-data used
to support runtime reflection. The cost of this savings is the loss of the ability to use certain
reflection capabilities of the standard Java runtime environment. When set all meta-data except for
that which is needed to obtain correct runtime semantics is eliminated.
For code that does not use reflection (i.e. serialization, RMI, CORBA or call methods in the
"java.lang.reflect" package), "-freduced-reflection" will result in proper operation with a savings
in executable code size.
JNI ("-fjni") and the binary compatibility ABI ("-findirect-dispatch") do not work properly without
full reflection meta-data. Because of this, it is an error to use these options with
"-freduced-reflection".
Caution: If there is no reflection meta-data, code that uses a "SecurityManager" may not work
properly. Also calling "Class.forName()" may fail if the calling method has no reflection meta-data.
Configure-time Options
Some gcj code generations options affect the resulting ABI, and so can only be meaningfully given when
"libgcj", the runtime package, is configured. "libgcj" puts the appropriate options from this group into
a spec file which is read by gcj. These options are listed here for completeness; if you are using
"libgcj" then you won't want to touch these options.
-fuse-boehm-gc
This enables the use of the Boehm GC bitmap marking code. In particular this causes gcj to put an
object marking descriptor into each vtable.
-fhash-synchronization
By default, synchronization data (the data used for "synchronize", "wait", and "notify") is pointed
to by a word in each object. With this option gcj assumes that this information is stored in a hash
table and not in the object itself.
-fuse-divide-subroutine
On some systems, a library routine is called to perform integer division. This is required to get
exception handling correct when dividing by zero.
-fcheck-references
On some systems it's necessary to insert inline checks whenever accessing an object via a reference.
On other systems you won't need this because null pointer accesses are caught automatically by the
processor.
-fuse-atomic-builtins
On some systems, GCC can generate code for built-in atomic operations. Use this option to force gcj
to use these builtins when compiling Java code. Where this capability is present it should be
automatically detected, so you won't usually need to use this option.
SEE ALSO
gcc(1), gcjh(1), gjnih(1), gij(1), jcf-dump(1), gfdl(7), and the Info entries for gcj and gcc.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2001-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with
no Invariant Sections, the Front-Cover Texts being (a) (see below), and with the Back-Cover Texts being
(b) (see below). A copy of the license is included in the man page gfdl(7).
(a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is:
A GNU Manual
(b) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is:
You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU
software. Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise
funds for GNU development.