FreeBSD Removes GCC From Default Base System

An anonymous reader writes "With the LLVM/Clang migration, FreeBSD developers have now disabled building GCC and the GNU C++ standard library (libstdc++) as part of the FreeBSD base system. GCC and libstdc++ have been superseded by LLVM's Clang and libc++, respectively, on primary architectures for FreeBSD 10.0." You can still flip a few switches to get GCC, but the system compiler will still be clang. Update: 09/11 14:50 GMT by U L : Reader Noryungi noted that the What's Cooking for FreeBSD 10 page is also worth a look, adding "I have to say, this is shaping up to be a very interesting release. Bhyve [the BSD hypervisor], in particular, sounds very promising."

Comments

More interesting page for FreeBSD 10...

[Noryungi]

Try this one: https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10

I have to say, this is shaping up to be a very interesting release. Bhyve, in particular, sounds very promising...

Re:Just one question

[slacka]

I'm deeply disappointed that this issue was decided over philosophical instead of technical merits. If Clang was superior to GCC in the majority of benchmarks, then I would support this decision. But that’s not the case, GCC is still leading in most benchmarks and can be an order of magnitude faster when the popular OpenMP library is used.[1] Sadly, BSD users are the losers here.

[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm_33svn_competes&num=5

Re:Why?

[David Gerard]

tl;dr Apple is allergic to the GPL v2, and really allergic to the GPL v3. They were never happy about gcc being their base compiler, so they've been funding the hell out of LLVM/Clang so they can use that as their base compiler instead. Apple is also the main backer of FreeBSD.