Question

Despite their seemingly disparate approaches to the development
environment, both UNIX and Windows do share a common architectural
back-end when it comes to compilers (and many many other things, as we
will find out in the coming pages). Executable generation is
essentially handled end-to-end on both systems by one program: the
compiler. Both systems have a single front-end executable that acts as
glue for essentially all 5 steps mentioned above.

on: http://www.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/articles/RevEng/ch02.html#the_compiler

What does this mean? That the compiler on one machine compiles the program (preprocessing -> parsing -> translation -> assembly -> linking) and on the other machine, the compiler also performs the same task but in reverse? Not sure exactly what is meant by “Executable generation is essentially handled end-to-end on both systems … executable that acts as glue for essentially all 5 steps.”

Answer 1

This is basically English reading comprehension, not programming.

Executable generation is essentially handled end-to-end on both systems.

This means that from the beginning to the end, from the plaintext source to the final executable, one program, the compiler does all the work.

executable that acts as glue for essentially all 5 steps.

Be it either GCC or MSVC, there’s a driver, a kind of ‘manager’ executable that invokes the underlying preprocessor, parser, assembler and linker (these are CPP, cc1, as and ld in the case of GCC) executables. It’s just an umbrella, a wrapper for its sub-programs.

I would, however, disagree with Win and Unix sharing a fundamental architecture. What they have in common is only the very basic stuff that can’t really be done differently. E. g., they both have a kernel, they are capable of running on a Neumann-architecture computer, etc. Just as if the author said that car engines and hand mills share a common architecture merely because both are mechanical devices.