8cc

Have you tried -o to specify the output file? As for -a it doesn't look like -a is actually handled in parseopt, through process of elimination it looks like -E sets cpponly, -c sets dontlink, and -S sets dumpasm. So from main.c:143 if you don't set any of those, dumpast needs to be true, and the only way I see that getting set to true is by using this flag '-fdump-ast' From this commit[0] it looks like -a was removed, but usage docs and error messages weren't updated. [0]https://github.com/rui314/8cc/commit/614f6e7b643333b9baaf8fb... Edit: adding link to relevant commit.

This self-referencing naturally occurs if you are writing a self-hosting compiler. I have read the Ken's paper, but when I was writing my C compiler in C (https://github.com/rui314/8cc/blob/master/lex.c#L306), I was not aware that this was what Ken wrote in the paper. It was funny to notice that long after I wrote the code.

From the README: The code is heavily inspired by https://github.com/rui314/8cc as well as http://bellard.org/tcc/. I recommend studying the source code of 8cc before contributing here, as 8cc is currently far more mature.

I personally struggled to work with other compilers, I think TCC is too terse, and GCC/Clang have too much code. https://github.com/rui314/8cc Got things right, and I am trying continue with it's style. I will be happy if a student can take my compiler and port it to his own invented cpu with a modest amount of work.