GCC 5.1 Released

kthreadd writes: Version 5.1 of GCC, the primary free software compiler for GNU and other operating systems, has been released. Version 5 includes many changes from the 4.x series. Starting with this release the default compiler mode for C is gnu11 instead of the older gnu89. New features include new compiler warnings, support for Cilk Plus. There is a new attribute no_reorder which prevents reordering of selected symbols against other such symbols or inline assembler, enabling link-time optimization of the Linux kernel without having to use -fno-toplevel-reorder. Two new preprocessor directives have also been added, __has_include and __has_include_next, to test the availability of headers. Also, there's a new C++ ABI due to changes to libstdc++. The old ABI is however still supported and can be enabled using a macro. Other changes include full support for C++14. Also the Fortran frontend has received some improvements and users will now be able to have colorized diagnostics, and the Go frontend has been updated to the Go 1.4.2 release.

Comments

Re:No disrespect to GCC, but why not LLVM?

[gweihir]

And why not have both? GCC is the old, very reliable and well-known workhorse, that produces good results. LLVM is the new, hip thing that has not been around for too long and is a lot more experimental in philosophy than GCC. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Having both provides redundancy, choice and a way to compare features and actually get a relative estimate in relation to a different compiler.

Putting all eggs into one basket is a very commercial-software thing to do and it is not a good idea.