I can't parse this in a way that it makes sense; I suspect you're mixing up some terminology. I'm guessing you mean that you need access to all transitively inc

I can't parse this in a way that it makes sense; I suspect you're mixing up some terminology. I'm guessing you mean that you need access to all transitively included headers to know a macro's definition. That's certainly true, but it's not linking, which involves resolving symbols in the object files that are the output of the compiler. The C preprocessor logically runs before the compiler; its output forms the compiler's input. You can run it without running the compiler at all.