How to compile with a .o file that was compiled with other .o files (C99) - c

Question

consider c.c a code that includes a.h and b.h, and main.c a code that includes c.h
i tried to compile it like so
gcc --std=c99 -o a.o -c a.c
gcc --std=c99 -o b.o -c b.c
gcc --std=c99 -o c.o -c c.c a.o b.o
but when I run the last one, gcc yells at me
gcc --std=c99 -o c.o -c c.c a.o b.o
gcc: warning: a.o: linker input file unused because linking not done
gcc: warning: b.o: linker input file unused because linking not done
and then when I try to compile the main.c file using gcc -o main main.c c.o it says that there are a lot of undefined references, which is predictable once the c file was not correctly compiled.
I've seen some similar questions here at stackoverflow, but I couldn't get it to work neither way.
I'm on Arch Linux running gcc v4.9.2-3

Answer 1

First, it is -std=c99 with a single dash.
I guess you are on Linux.
Then, you always should pass -Wall -Wextra -g (especially since you are a newbie) to gcc : -Wall ask for nearly all warnings, -Wextra for even more warnings, -g ask for debug information.
At last, you want to produce an executable myprog (don't name executables as c.o, this is supposed to be an object file) with
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -o myprog c.c a.o b.o
You need to remove any -c since you want the linking to happen.
If you really mean -but that is very unusual today, better make shared libraries!- to agglomerate several object files into one all.o (to be linked later with other objects) you might try the -r linker option
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -r c.c a.o b.o -o all.o
But last time I tried it was in the previous century, so details could be wrong.
There are very few reasons to agglomerate objects using the -r linker option. Unless you really know what you are doing, you are very probably wrong (in trying -r).
Perhaps you want to make a software library. These days it is much better to make a shared library. A shared library (technically an ELF shared object) should contain position independent code. So, assuming you have three translation units t1.c, t2.c, t3.c you first compile them as PIC :
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -fPIC t1.c -c -o t1.pic.o
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -fPIC t2.c -c -o t2.pic.o
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -fPIC t3.c -c -o t3.pic.o
then you link all these PIC object files into a shared library libmyt.so
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g -shared \
t1.pic.o t2.pic.o t3.pic.o \
-o libmyt.so
Later you'll use this shared library e.g. as
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g main.o -o myprog -Wl,-rpath . libmyt.so
or as
gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -g main.o -o myprog -Wl,-rpath . -L. -lmyt
You might consider static linking with ar to make a static library libmyt.a but I don't recommend that.
Of course, you'll debug your program using gdb ./myprog and you could try running it with ./myprog. To use valgrind, try valgrind ./myprog
If you have several translation units, better learn how to use GNU make. Read the Program Library HowTo and this and these hints.