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Re: Switching from GCC to Clang, any downsides?
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Re: Switching from GCC to Clang, any downsides?


  • Subject: Re: Switching from GCC to Clang, any downsides?
  • From: Markus Spoettl <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 15:27:29 +0200

Hello,

On Sep 8, 2009, at 7:03 PM, Chris Espinosa wrote:
Apple's default and recommended compiler for Snow Leopard is gcc-4.2. The llvm-gcc4.2 and clang-llvm compilers are available and fully qualified, but are not as mature as gcc 4.2 and lack certain features. (Clang, for example, does not compile C++ or Objective-C+ + code.) Clang and llvm also do not generate code for the iPhone device at this time.

I've since switched to Clang and everything appears to be perfectly fine. However, since there's so little in information on this topic there may be some caveats involved when switching from GCC. Are there?

We converted the entire Xcode source code base (2.5MLOC) first to llvm-gcc then to clang-llvm with very few problems. The Clang team went through three or four compiler builds until it built everything correctly, then there was one problem with Blocks (a brand-new language and runtime feature), but otherwise the switchover to Clang went incredibly smoothly for us. It is a very, very, very solid brand-new compiler. But it is not unreasonable to be a little squeamish about a brand-new compiler, so it is not the default in Snow Leopard or Xcode.

Thanks all for the input.

I ran into an issue today where the app crashes when started through the Instruments/Leaks tool (according to the stack trace the crash happens in WebKit). Recompiled in GCC 4.2 and everything works as expected.

I guess that means that we're not going to use Clang just yet. Too many maybes and some real issues (missing warnings for real code errors) and we're too close to our own release, so squeamishness is in order.

I'm looking forward to switching, though.

Regards
Markus

--
__________________________________________
Markus Spoettl

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References: 
 >Switching from GCC to Clang, any downsides? (From: Markus Spoettl <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Switching from GCC to Clang, any downsides? (From: Chris Espinosa <email@hidden>)

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