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LLVM and Clang 3.4 Are Out
An anonymous reader writes that the LLVM compiler framework and Clang C++ compiler hit 3.4 "With C++14 draft fully implemented in Clang and libc++. Read more in LLVM and Clang release notes."
Also of note: "This is expected to be the last release of LLVM which compiles using a C++98 toolchain. We expect to start using some C++11 features in LLVM and other sub-projects starting after this release. That said, we are committed to supporting a reasonable set of modern C++ toolchains as the host compiler on all of the platforms. This will at least include Visual Studio 2012 on Windows, and Clang 3.1 or GCC 4.7.x on Mac and Linux. The final set of compilers (and the C++11 features they support) is not set in stone, but we wanted users of LLVM to have a heads up that the next release will involve a substantial change in the host toolchain requirements."
Yet another good readon for everyone to drop GCC and move on to the future. GCC is obsolete in pretty much every aspect,
Pure FUD. Who the hell modded this up. It's just plain trolling. GCC and LLVM are neck and neck, with GCC winning in the quality of the optimizer. I've also had compiler crashes much more recently with LLVM than with GCC, so it seems that GCC is also somewhat more battle hardened.
and the non-permissive license makes it hard to use for other purposes than simple command-line compilation compared to LLVM which can be integrated in many different products.
Only if you want to make your other tool non-free. Otherwise GCC works just fine.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The BSD folks tend to argue that things work out in the end anyway. Useful contributions find their way back, and when they don't then at least someone got some good code out of it. There are few exceptions, in general you can't force anyone to contribute back. Very few projects are that good. The only thing you achieve is that your code is used in less places.
He's referring to integrating the compiler into your IDE. GCC makes this intentionally difficult, which is a big reason why there is no Visual Studio equivalent system that uses GCC. CLANG/LLVM is designed much more openly and should allow developers to really reach (and exceed) feature parity with Visual Studio.
I read the internet for the articles.
What they can't do is micro-compile snippets of code to find errors, do auto-completion, etc...
I'll let the clang guys explain it better.
I read the internet for the articles.
There actually is a good reason.
Let's say a company invents a proprietary bit of silicon, and wants a compiler for it. They may likely chose one that requires them not to spill the beans on their proprietary hardware in the process. So yes, it's true, you don't get the benefit of their "special sauce", but you were never going to get it anyway, so there is no loss.
However, that same company now has a lot of people using the code. It takes time and money to track separate changes, so if they find a bug in code not specific to their proprietary stuff they are likely to fix it, and submit it upstream so they don't have to maintain it going forward. That code will benefit you.
So basically, the people who find the GPL odious will never use gcc, and will find some alternative. Given those people have fully closed options (license Intel's compiler, or Microsoft's), or use something like LLVM. With the LLVM model they can submit fixes to their non-secret sauce upstream, as well as get others to help fix problems they find in the non-secret sauce part.
TL;DL, if you choose gcc or LLVM you're never getting their secret sauce, but if you choose LLVM you get more help on the non-secret sauce parts.
That is the real essence of the "BSD License" philosophy. You may or may not agree.
Huh? QCreator, Netbeans and Eclipse C/C++ IDEs are fully integrated with GCC, including both debugging and compilation.
What Xcode can do is integrate llvm with autocompletion. For example, if you do a switch statement on an enum-value, it autocompletes the possible enum constants after you type "case". After the first entry, it automatically removes the constants you already used from the list of possibilities.
Xcode also does perfect autocompletion (method names, parameter types, etc.) of types derived from C++ templates, which simply isn't possible without compiling the file. This even works as you change the same file those templates are declared in.
Other things include the analyzer, which tells you about issues that arise on certain input conditions. When you click on an issue, Xcode visually displays the flow through the program to arrive at the undesired end result using arrows.
What's the code-completion situation in GCC these days, or the static analyzer situation? (I don't know.) Apple went with Clang at least in part because of not being able to get those features out of GCC without making Xcode GPL3 compliant, but I'd guess that an IDE with a compatible license might have a better shot at getting that information out of GCC. Code completion and static analysis are 2 of the great features of Xcode; I wouldn't want to go back to tools that didn't have either.
Ah yes, all those people running BSD... All those people.
Which, hey, if you include Apples OSX, is a hell of a lot of people. So yes, let us bask in all that effort that Apple has done for the open source community.
Very few [open/free] projects are that good.
Well with that sort of QUANTITY, you can't expect them all to be stellar.
The only thing you achieve is that your code is used in less places.
But those are places that you can actually use rather than the proprietary walled garden constrictive license which make for the sort of thing where you don't actually own the things you own. It also makes for a platform which is dead in the water and has no legs. And it's usually expensive.
I don't care if a few businessmen shy away from the code I throw out there under an free license. They most certainly wouldn't have helped me.