Object code in the context of Compiled

In computing, a compiler is software that translates computer code written in one programming language (the source language) into another language (the target language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a low-level programming language (e.g. assembly language, object code, or machine code) to create an executable program.

There are many different types of compilers which produce output in different useful forms. A cross-compiler produces code for a different CPU or operating system than the one on which the cross-compiler itself runs. A bootstrap compiler is often a temporary compiler, used for compiling a more permanent or better optimized compiler for a language.

A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages.

Browser plug-ins are a different type of module and no longer supported by the major browsers. One difference is that extensions are distributed as source code, while plug-ins are executables (i.e. object code). The most popular browser, Google Chrome, has over 100,000 extensions available but stopped supporting plug-ins in 2020.

A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software (or free and open-source software) as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.

A software system is a system of intercommunicating components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate programs, configuration files, which are used to set up these programs, system documentation, which describes the structure of the system, and user documentation, which explains how to use the system".

A software system differs from a computer program or software. While a computer program is generally a set of instructions (source, or object code) that perform a specific task, a software system is more or an encompassing concept with many more components such as specification, test results, end-user documentation, maintenance records, etc.

Binary-code compatibility (binary compatible or object-code compatible) is a property of a computer system, meaning that it can run the same executable code, typically machine code for a general-purpose computer central processing unit (CPU), that another computer system can run. Source-code compatibility, on the other hand, means that recompilation or interpretation is necessary before the program can be run on the compatible system.

For a compiled program on a general operating system, binary compatibility often implies that not only the CPUs (instruction sets) of the two computers are binary compatible, but also that interfaces and behaviours of the operating system (OS) and application programming interfaces (APIs), and the application binary interfaces (ABIs) corresponding to those APIs, are sufficiently equal, i.e. "compatible".

Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is a memory management feature of the Clang compiler providing automatic reference counting for the Objective-C and Swift programming languages. At compile time, it inserts into the object code messages retain and release which increase and decrease the reference count at run time, marking for deallocation those objects when the number of references to them reaches zero.

ARC differs from tracing garbage collection in that there is no background process that deallocates the objects asynchronously at runtime. Unlike tracing garbage collection, ARC does not handle reference cycles automatically. This means that as long as there are "strong" references to an object, it will not be deallocated. Strong cross-references can accordingly create deadlocks and memory leaks. It is up to the developer to break cycles by using weak references.

In computer science, static program analysis (also known as static analysis or static simulation) is the analysis of computer programs performed without executing them, in contrast with dynamic program analysis, which is performed on programs during their execution in the integrated environment.

The term is usually applied to analysis performed by an automated tool, with human analysis typically being called "program understanding", program comprehension, or code review. In the last of these, software inspection and software walkthroughs are also used. In most cases the analysis is performed on some version of a program's source code, and, in other cases, on some form of its object code.