Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:53:36 +1000 From: Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Clang - what is the story? Message-ID: <4F1C9370.8080609@herveybayaustralia.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20120122212653.GA2489@hemlock.hydra> References: <4F1AAB66.5070100@herveybayaustralia.com.au> <20120121133506.7bcfaec9@gumby.homeunix.com> <20120121154313.53d3fec6@gumby.homeunix.com> <20120122070205.GA13081@hemlock.hydra> <4F1BB640.2050707@herveybayaustralia.com.au> <20120122074558.GA22918@hemlock.hydra> <4F1BD17C.3030209@herveybayaustralia.com.au> <20120122123748.GA26579@hemlock.hydra> <20120122203302.GA90962@slackbox.erewhon.net> <20120122212653.GA2489@hemlock.hydra>
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On 01/23/12 07:26, Chad Perrin wrote: > On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 09:33:02PM +0100, Roland Smith wrote: >> PCC is only a C compiler, and there is some C++ code (e.g. groff) in the base >> system. The FreeBSD port is marked as i386 and amd64 only, even though other >> architectures seem to be there in the PCC source. > I had somehow forgotten there was anything in the base system written in > C++. That would probably account for the choice of Clang over PCC. What part is that? I thought it had to be all c... >> Personally I think it is a good thing to have different C compilers. In the >> past I've installed pcc just to see if my programs compiled OK. Now I tend to >> use clang for that. It does a great job of identifying programming errors. > I have found it rather disconcerting for quite some time now that the > open source development community -- normally quite clued in to the > benefits of diversity and friendly, competitive collaboration for > maintaining a strong software ecosystem with lots of high quality options > -- has been so singularly overrun by a single C compiler (GCC), > especially given the central importance of C to the development of the > major open source OSes. The problem was compounded by the increasingly > byzantine design of GCC itself and the proliferation of ugly edge-cases > that created. > > I was saddened as well to see that TenDRA had vanished, because I thought > it brought some important perspective (somewhat unique to its development > ideals) to the selection of available compilers, as do PCC, LLVM/Clang, > and even the Small-C Compiler. > > I hope that even if nobody else makes it the "official" compiler of any > language, AerieBSD remains an active project with PCC as part of its base > system, and that MINIX3 establishes itself reasonably well with TACK, if > only to ensure more than two viable C compiler options for members of > major open source Unixy OS families. Four is probably a good number, > with a few less-central implementations floating around as well to > explore the fringes. >
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