The Arduino IDE uses the gcc toolset for actually compiling and linking. You can use those directly if you would like incremental builds. If you turn on verbos

The Arduino IDE uses the gcc toolset for actually compiling and linking. You can use those directly if you would like incremental builds. If you turn on verbose logging in the IDE the logs will show the actual commands it is using to invoke gcc which is handy to figure out locations and flags needed for the various commands. The verbose IDE log should also show the command line tool (probably avrdude) that is used to download the binary to your Arduino.