Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC): Standard Libraries

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### 12.5 Standard Libraries

GCC by itself attempts to be a conforming freestanding implementation. See Language Standards Supported by GCC, for details of what this means. Beyond the library facilities required of such an implementation, the rest of the C library is supplied by the vendor of the operating system. If that C library doesn’t conform to the C standards, then your programs might get warnings (especially when using `-Wall`) that you don’t expect.

For example, the `sprintf` function on SunOS 4.1.3 returns `char *` while the C standard says that `sprintf` returns an `int`. The `fixincludes` program could make the prototype for this function match the Standard, but that would be wrong, since the function will still return `char *`.

If you need a Standard compliant library, then you need to find one, as GCC does not provide one. The GNU C library (called `glibc`) provides ISO C, POSIX, BSD, SystemV and X/Open compatibility for GNU/Linux and HURD-based GNU systems; no recent version of it supports other systems, though some very old versions did. Version 2.2 of the GNU C library includes nearly complete C99 support. You could also ask your operating system vendor if newer libraries are available.