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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T09:34:19+00:00

I just tried to write a simple C program on OSX Lion #include <stdio.h>

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I just tried to write a simple C program on OSX Lion

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
  printf("hello world\n");                                                                          
  return 0;
}

Compiling with gcc

$ gcc hello.c
test.c:1:19: error: stdio.h: No such file or directory
test.c: In function ‘main’:
test.c:3: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘printf’

Ok…fine

$ gcc -I /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/include
ld: library not found for -lcrt1.10.6.o
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

What? Let’s see…

$ gcc -I /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/include -L/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/lib test.c
$ ./a.out
hello world

Finally!

That seems like a lot of effort just to get a hello world working, how do I make gcc find libraries and header files in the MacOSX10.6.sdk directory by default like it does on linux? On linux I find ldd and ldconfig quite useful, they don’t seem to exist on OSX…is there an equivalent? What other useful tools are there for developing C on OSX?

Yes, I know xcode makes this easier, but suppose I wanted to use vim and the command line to work on an opensource c project.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I can think of three possibilities:

    1. You had 10.6 installed and upgraded to 10.7. You need to install the new version of Xcode (4.1, get it from the app store) to get back the developer tools.

    2. you installed Xcode, did a custom install, and unchecked “UNIX development” or something. Rerun the installer and install the missing parts.

    3. You installed a broken third-party version of gcc. Try which gcc and see what you get.

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