SDCC – Small Device C Compiler
3 hours ago
- SDCC is a retargetable, optimizing compiler suite for Standard C (ANSI C89, ISO C99, ISO C11, ISO C23).
- It targets many 8-bit microcontrollers including Intel MCS51, Freescale HC08, Zilog Z80, Padauk, STM8, MOS 6502, and WDC 65C02.
- The suite includes components such as assembler/linker (sdas/sdld), preprocessor (sdcpp), simulators (ucsim), debugger (sdcdb), and library utilities (sdar, sdranlib, sdnm), mostly under GPL licenses.
- SDCC offers MCU-specific language extensions, standard optimizations (e.g., loop optimizations, constant folding, dead code elimination), and MCU-specific optimizations like global register allocation.
- It supports data types from char (8-bit) to long long (64-bit), float, _Bool/bool, and _BitInt, and allows inline assembler code.
- Originally written by Sandeep Dutta, SDCC is now developed by a community and hosted on SourceForge.
- Recent releases include SDCC 4.6.0 (2026-06-22) and SDCC 4.5.0 (2025-01-28), adding C2y features, new ports, and improvements.
- Officially supported platforms include GNU/Linux (amd64, x86), Windows (x86, amd64), and macOS (amd64), with known builds on other Unix-like systems.
- Funding from NGI0 Commons Fund and Sovereign Tech Fund supports hardware improvements, modern C standards support, and safety/security enhancements.