I'm going to go with the guys who said gcc - I was thinking that as I read the subheading before I read the individual comments. It's just there on every system

I'm going to go with the guys who said gcc - I was thinking that as I read the subheading before I read the individual comments. It's just there on every system I use, or available to install quickly. I've used C and C++ compilers that compiled code quicker, or compiled it smaller, or more optimized, that have more copyright notices when invoked, or take more or less time to install, but gcc is ubiquitous, easy to use and (mostly) stays out of your face. The other day I wanted to write some code for an emulator which uses Musashi (68000 CPU emulator). In about 30 or so minutes, I was able to grab the latest binutils+gcc source from ftp.gnu.org, build a cross compiler and compile some code for m68k-elf, objdump it and load it in the emulator. To me anyway, that is pretty awesome.