There are 330Kb image files for both the BDS and Aztec C compilers.
I would suggest installing one of those as your B: drive and make the C: drive empty. The A: drive should have a bootable copy of CP/M, of course.
Once you do that, you can use the C: drive for all your source files. Small programs can be copied onto B: and compiled there. But if you have a particularly large program and need extra room, you can build on the C: drive. That way the compiler, assembler and linker can use the extra space.
You can write submit files to do all the compile, assemble and link operations. Or you can type them in manually, one command at a time. I would suggest doing it manually at first, and then making a submit file to build from.
There are some examples in the link below.
There are a few C programs in that archive, each with its own simple submit file. Most of those programs have a single source file but some have multiple source files, and one uses overlays. Some use Aztec C and others use BDS. Some have versions for both, So you'll find examples of each.
See the example "make.sub" build file below:
cc $1.c
as -ZAP $1.asm
ln $1.o c.lib
That's one I use for many of the simple single-source programs. To build with it, you type something like this:
submit make clife
That command would build a program called "clife.c" and create clife.com.
If you wanted, you could put the C compiler on drive B: and the source files on C:
Then type something like this:
A>
c:C>
b:cc c:clife.cC>
b:as c:clife.asmC>
b:ln c:clife.o c:c.libThat will use the Aztec C compiler programs on B: to build clife.com on the C: drive using source code from the C: drive.