How to disable compiler optimizations in gcc?

To test without copy elision and see you copy/move constructors/operators in action add "-fno-elide-constructors".

Even with no optimizations (-O0 ), GCC and Clang will still do copy elision, which has the effect of skipping copy/move constructors in some cases. See this question for the details about copy elision.

However, in Clang 3.4 it does trigger a bug (an invalid temporary object without calling constructor), which is fixed in 3.5.

The gcc option -O enables different levels of optimization. Use -O0 to disable them and use -S to output assembly. -O3 is the highest level of optimization.

Starting with gcc 4.8 the optimization level -Og is available. It enables optimizations that do not interfere with debugging and is the recommended default for the standard edit-compile-debug cycle.

To change the dialect of the assembly to either intel or att use -masm=intel or -masm=att.

You can also enable certain optimizations manually with -fname.

Have a look at the gcc manual for much more.

Use the command-line option -O0 (-[capital o][zero]) to disable optimization, and -S to get assembly file. Look here to see more gcc command-line options.

For gcc you want to omit any -O1 -O2 or -O3 options passed to the compiler or if you already have them you can append the -O0 option to turn it off again. It might also help you to add -g for debug so that you can see the c source and disassembled machine code in your debugger.

See also: http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Optimized-Code.html