GCC's assembly output of an empty program on x86, win32

I write empty programs to annoy the hell out of stackoverflow coders, NOT. I am just exploring the gnu toolchain.

Now the following might be too deep for me, but to continuie the empty program saga I have started to examine the output of the C compiler, the stuff GNU as consumes.

gcc version 4.4.0 (TDM-1 mingw32)

test.c:

int main()
{
    return 0;
}

gcc -S test.c

    .file   "test.c"
    .def    ___main;    .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
    .text
.globl _main
    .def    _main;  .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
_main:
    pushl   %ebp
    movl    %esp, %ebp
    andl    $-16, %esp
    call    ___main
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    ret 

Can you explain what happens here? Here is my effort to understand it. I have used the as manual and my minimal x86 ASM knowledge:

• .file "test.c" is the directive for the logical filename.
• .def: according to the docs "Begin defining debugging information for a symbol name". What is a symbol (a function name/variable?) and what kind of debugging information?
• .scl: docs say "Storage class may flag whether a symbol is static or external". Is this the same static and external I know from C? And what is that '2'?
• .type: stores the parameter "as the type attribute of a symbol table entry", I have no clue.
• .endef: no problem.
• .text: Now this is problematic, it seems to be something called section and I have read that its the place for code, but the docs didn't tell me too much.
• .globl "makes the symbol visible to ld.", the manual is quite clear on this.
• _main: This might be the starting address (?) for my main function
• pushl_: A long (32bit) push