MiniCC

A small fork of the Tiny C Compiler (TinyCC) trimmed down and extended to be embedded inside other applications as a library. It keeps TinyCC's defining trait — compile and run C code on the fly, in-process — and adds two things TinyCC lacks: a wasm32 backend and a proper shared-library (libtcc.so/.dylib) build driven by CMake.

Status: beta. Used internally in python-blosc2; interfaces are stabilizing but may still change.

What's different from TinyCC

• wasm32 backend. Compile C straight to freestanding WebAssembly (wasm32-unknown-unknown, no WASI, no host OS runtime), aimed at numeric kernels you want to JIT and run anywhere. Includes optimization passes — basic-block coalescing, peephole, direct branches, and structured control-flow reconstruction — to keep loop-heavy code competitive. See wasm-specs.md and wasm32-opts.md for the design and benchmarks.
• Shared libtcc. Builds a real libtcc.so/libtcc.dylib with the libtcc1 runtime helpers merged in, so apps can link one library and use the libtcc.h API to compile and run C at runtime.
• CMake build. Replaces the autotools/Makefile flow, with cross-compilation support (CMAKE_CROSSCOMPILING) and options to pick the native backend.
• Backend fixes. Assorted arm64 and x86_64 correctness fixes carried on top of upstream TinyCC.

Everything else is TinyCC: native code generation for i386, x86_64, arm, arm64 and riscv64, the full C preprocessor, and -run to execute C without an explicit link step.

Building

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

Useful options (all ON by default):

Option	What it does
MINICC_BUILD_WASM32_TCC	Build the wasm32-tcc cross compiler
MINICC_BUILD_SHARED_LIBTCC	Build shared libtcc (.so/.dylib)
MINICC_ENABLE_TESTING	Enable the CTest harness
MINICC_NATIVE_TARGET	Force the native backend (i386, x86_64, arm, arm64, riscv64, wasm32)

Run the tests with ctest --test-dir build.

Using it as a library

Link against libtcc and drive it through libtcc.h — create a TCCState, set the output type, compile a string, and either relocate and call a symbol or tcc_run() it. See tests/libtcc_api_test.c for a minimal working example.

License

LGPL, same as TinyCC. See COPYING and RELICENSING.