What are these commands used in the following section when using the libxl library?

Question

It's from the readme section on how to use libxl when I downloaded it and started using it in mingw-w64

• What is the use of -I in this command?
• What is the use of -L in this command?
• What is the use of -lxl in this command?

I can't figure out what they mean and what they do; can anyone help me?

This is an example taken from the library libxl readme section.

Answer 1

This is a command to invoke Gnu's C++ compiler on the 'generate.cpp' source code file to create an executable named generate.exe.

-I../../../include.cpp says to look 3 directories above the current one for an Include file named include.cpp.

-lxl says to search the "xl" library when the linking loader runs and -L../../../bin says you might find the "xl" library in the bin folder three levels above the current directory