RE: while i have your attention...

i want to link several source files together into one bytecode file
without gcc performing any optimizations. first step:

  llvmgcc -c -S code.c

which produces a code.s file. next i tried:

  as code.s

but that produced a .bc file instead of the .o file i was hoping for.

".bc" and ".o" files are identical in contents, they just differ in
suffix.

can i link the .bc file in with other object files, eg:
  llvmgcc -o code stuff.o code.s.bc

That will do more than you want. It will link in the standard C libraries
and some other support stuff, using the gccld utility. If you _just_ want
to link the two bytecode files together into a new bytecode file, use the
'link' utility like this:

link stuff.o code.s.bc -o out.bc

-Chris