In computer programming, a precompiled header (PCH) is a (C or C++) header file that is compiled into an intermediate form that is faster to process for the compiler. Usage of precompiled headers may significantly reduce compilation time, especially when applied to large header files, header files that include many other header files, or header files that are included in many translation units.

In the C and C++ programming languages, a header file is a file whose text may be automatically included in another source file by the C preprocessor by the use of a preprocessor directive in the source file.

Header files can sometimes contain very large amounts of source code (for instance, the header files windows.h and Cocoa/Cocoa.h on Microsoft Windows and OS X, respectively). This is especially true with the advent of large "header" libraries that make extensive use of templates, like the Eigen math library and Boost C++ libraries. They are written almost entirely as header files that the user #includes, rather than being linked at runtime. Thus, each time the user compiles their program, the user is essentially recompiling numerous header libraries as well. (These would be precompiled into shared objects or dynamic link libraries in non "header" libraries.)

To reduce compilation times, some compilers allow header files to be compiled into a form that is faster for the compiler to process. This intermediate form is known as a precompiled header, and is commonly held in a file named with the extension .pch or similar, such as .gch under the GNU Compiler Collection.

For example, given a C++ file source.cpp that includes header.hpp:

//header.hpp
...

//source.cpp
#include "header.hpp"
...

When compiling source.cpp for the first time with the precompiled header feature turned on, the compiler will generate a precompiled header, header.pch. The next time, if the timestamp of this header did not change, the compiler can skip the compilation phase relating to header.hpp and instead use header.pch directly.

Microsoft Visual C++ (version 6.0 and newer^{[citation needed]}) can precompile any code, not just headers.^[1] It can do this in two ways: either precompiling all code up to a file whose name matches the /Ycfilename option or (when /Yc is specified without any filename) precompiling all code up to the first occurrence of #pragma hdrstop in the code^[2][3] The precompiled output is saved in a file named after the filename given to the /Yc option, with a .pch extension, or in a file named according to the name supplied by the /Fpfilename option.^[3] The /Yu option, subordinate to the /Yc option if used together, causes the compiler to make use of already precompiled code from such a file.^[3]

pch.h (named stdafx.h before Visual Studio 2017^[4]) is a file generated by the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE wizard, that describes both standard system and project specific include files that are used frequently but hardly ever change.

The afx in stdafx.h stands for application framework extensions. AFX was the original abbreviation for the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). While the name stdafx.h was used by default in MSVC projects prior to version 2017, any alternative name may be manually specified.

Compatible compilers will precompile this file to reduce overall compile times. Visual C++ will not compile anything before the #include "pch.h" in the source file, unless the compile option /Yu'pch.h' is unchecked (by default); it assumes all code in the source up to and including that line is already compiled.

Precompiled headers are supported in GCC (3.4 and newer). GCC's approach is similar to these of VC and compatible compilers. GCC saves precompiled versions of header files using a ".gch" suffix. When compiling a source file, the compiler checks whether this file is present in the same directory and uses it if possible.

GCC can only use the precompiled version if the same compiler switches are set as when the header was compiled and it may use at most one. Further, only preprocessor instructions may be placed before the precompiled header (because it must be directly or indirectly included through another normal header, before any compilable code).

GCC automatically identifies most header files by their extension. However, if this fails (e.g. because of non-standard header extensions), the -x switch can be used to ensure that GCC treats the file as a header.

The clang compiler added support for PCH in Clang 2.5 / LLVM 2.5 of 2009.^[5] The compiler both tokenizes the input source code and performs syntactic and semantic analyses of headers, writing out the compiler's internal generated abstract syntax tree (AST) and symbol table to a precompiled header file.^[6]

clang's precompiled header scheme, with some improvements such as the ability for one precompiled header to reference another, internally used, precompiled header, also forms the basis for its modules mechanism.^[6] It uses the same bitcode file format that is employed by LLVM, encapsulated in clang-specific sections within Common Object File Format or Extensible Linking Format files.^[6]

In the default project configuration, the C++Builder compiler implicitly generates precompiled headers for all headers included by a source module until the line #pragma hdrstop is found.^[7]: 76 Precompiled headers are shared for all modules of the project if possible. For example, when working with the Visual Component Library, it is common to include the vcl.h header first which contains most of the commonly used VCL header files. Thus, the precompiled header can be shared across all project modules, which dramatically reduces the build times.

In addition, C++Builder can be instrumented to use a specific header file as precompiled header, similar to the mechanism provided by Visual C++.

C++Builder 2009 introduces a "Precompiled Header Wizard" which parses all source modules of the project for included header files, classifies them (i.e. excludes header files if they are part of the project or do not have an Include guard) and generates and tests a precompiled header for the specified files automatically.

A pretokenized header (PTH) is a header file stored in a form that has been run through lexical analysis, but no semantic operations have been done on it. PTH is present in Clang before it supported PCH, and has also been tried in a branch of GCC.^[8]

Compared to a full PCH mechanism, PTH has the advantages of language (and dialect) independence, as lexical analysis is similar for the C-family languages, and architecture independence, as the same stream of tokens can be used when compiling for different target architectures.^[9] It however has the disadvantage of not going any further than simple lexical analysis, requiring that syntactic and semantic analysis of the token stream be performed with every compilation. In addition, the time to compile scaling linearly with the size, in lexical tokens, of the pretokenized file, which is not necessarily the case for a fully-fledged precompilation mechanism (PCH in clang allows random access).^[9]

Clang's pretokenization mechanism includes several minor mechanisms for assisting the pre-processor: caching of file existence and datestamp information, and recording inclusion guards so that guarded code can be quickly skipped over.^[9]

Since C++20, C++ has offered modules as a modern alternative to precompiled headers^[10], however they differ from precompiled headers in that they do not require the preprocessor directive #include, but rather are accessed using the word import. A module must be declared using the word module to indicate that a file is a module.

Modules provide the benefits of precompiled headers in that they compile much faster than traditional headers which are #included and are processed much faster during the linking phase^[11], but also greatly reduce boilerplate code, allowing code to be implemented in a single file, rather than being separated across an interface and implementation file which was typical prior to the introduction of modules. Furthermore, modules eliminate the necessity to use #include guards or #pragma once, as modules do not directly modify the source code, unlike #includes, which during the preprocessing step must include source code from the specified header. Thus, importing a module is not handled by the preprocessor, but is rather handled during the compilation phase. Modules, unlike headers, do not have to be processed multiple times during compilation.^[11]

C++ modules often have the extension .cppm, though some alternative extensions include .ixx and .mxx.^[12] All symbols within a module that the programmer wishes to be accessible outside of the module must be marked export.

Modules do not allow for granular imports of specific namespaces, classes, or symbols within a module, unlike Java or Rust which do allow for the aforementioned. Importing a module imports all symbols marked with export, making it akin to a wildcard import in Java or Rust.

Since C++23, the C++ standard library has been exported as a module as well, though as of currently it must be imported in its entirety (using import std;). The module names std and std.* are reserved by the C++ standard^[13], however most compilers allow a flag to override this.^[14]

Modules may not export or leak macros, and because of this the order of modules does not matter (however convention is typically to begin with standard library imports, then all project imports, then external dependency imports in alphabetical order).^[11] If a module must re-export an imported module, it can do so using export import, meaning that the module is first imported and then exported out of the importing module.^[10]

Modules may have partitions, which separate the implementation of the module across several files. Module partitions are declared using the syntax A:B, meaning the module A has the partition B. Module partitions cannot individually be imported outside of the module that owns the partition itself, meaning that anyone who desires to access code that is part of a module partition must import the entire module that owns the partition.^[10]

To link the module partition B back to the owning module A, write import :B; inside the file containing the declaration of module A. These import statements may themselves be exported by the owning module, even if the partition itself cannot be imported directly.

C++ modules do not have a hierarchical system, but typically use a hierarchical naming convention, like Java's packages. In other words, C++ does not have "submodules", meaning the . symbol which may be included in a module name bears no syntactic meaning and is used only to suggest the association of a module.^[10] For example, the modules A and A.B in theory are disjoint modules and need not necessarily have any relation, however such a naming scheme is often employed to suggest that the module A.B is somehow related to the module A.

A simple example of using C++ modules is as follows:

Hello.cppm

export module Hello;

import std;

export namespace Hello {
    void printHello() {
        std::println("Hello world!");
    }
}

Main.cpp

import Hello;

int main() {
    Hello::printHello();
}

Everything above the line export module Hello; in the file Hello.cppm is referred to as what is "outside the module purview", meaning what is outside of the scope of the module. Typically, if headers must be included, all #includes are placed outside the module purview between a line containing only the statement module; and the declaration of export module, like so:

module;

#include <print>

#include "MyHeader.h"

export module MyModule;

The name of a module is not tied to the name of the file, unlike Java in which the name of a file must match the name of the class it declares, and the package it belongs to must match the path it is located in.

The file containing main() cannot be a module.

All code which does not belong to any module belongs to the so-called "unnamed module" (also known as the global module fragment), and thus cannot be imported by any module.

Headers may also be imported using import, even if they are not declared as modules - these are called "header units".^[15] The syntax is similar to including a header, with the difference being that #include is replaced with import and a semicolon is placed at the end of the statement. The semantics of searching for the file depending on whether quotation marks or angle brackets are used apply here as well.

• Prefix header
• Single compilation unit
• Java package

• The Care and Feeding of Pre-Compiled Headers
• Precompiled Headers with GCC
• Fractal eXtreme: Precompiled headers