When compiling using a make utility (such as make), the
compilation is usually performed as a two-step process: first generating the
intermediate files, then the final compilation and link step to produce one binary
output (as described in Multi-Step C Compilation).
The MPLAB XC8 C Compiler uses a unique
technology called OCG that uses an intermediate file format that is different than
traditional compilers (including XC16 and XC32). The intermediate file format used by
XC8 for C source files is a p-code file
(.p1 extension), not an object file.