3 ms·

You seem to be implying having a competitor to GCC is a bad thing? While there is something to be said for duplicated effort, I think it's actually helped impro

You seem to be implying having a competitor to GCC is a bad thing? While there is something to be said for duplicated effort, I think it's actually helped improve GCC a lot because they also 'copied' good things Clang did (like much better warnings, built-in static analysis etc.). So really everybody has benefited. It's good to have a bit of diversity and options, especially when they're all trying to be compatible.

TheDong 7y ago
> So really everybody has benefited. > It's good to have a bit of diversity and options It can be consistent to hold that those two statements do not hold in this case. GCC requires that developers uphold certain user freedoms (i.e. compiler extensions must be free software). Clang allows user's freedoms to be more easily violated. It's fine if you want to hold those two opinions, but if you state them as if they're the only opinions, that's not great. If you don't acknowledge that they're predicated on beliefs such as "user freedom isn't important to the expense of software improving in other ways" (or such), then of course you'll have trouble understanding why one might view clang/llvm in the negative light of effectively enabling "GCC, but without GPL".
mhh__ 7y ago
Having two good compliant compilers is great for C++ too: it keeps both compilers honest and also makes spotting weird behaviour easier in big codebases (i.e. to first order if your code results in different behaviour in GCC or Clang then it could be dangerous). Also has the added benefit of reducing the need to use compilers like Intel's (not sure on current benchmarks) but I really wouldn't want to ship something for AMD CPUs with Intel's compiler.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Contrary to what gets discussed here, C++ has more than just two good compliant compilers. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support and embedded compilers, or more legacy like platforms aren't listed.
  - cwzwarich 7y ago
    Besides GCC, Clang, and MSVC++, most other C++ compilers license the EDG frontend, so there's less heterogeneity than you would expect. I don't actually know if there's another implementation of C++11 besides the ones I listed. Even Microsoft now uses the EDG frontend for Intellisense, rather than their own (more incorrect) frontend.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      It is still more than a gcc vs clang thing.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - mhh__ 7y ago
    As in "Free" (One open source and GPL) compliant compilers.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Well that was missing.

TheDong 7y ago

> So really everybody has benefited. > It's good to have a bit of diversity and options It can be consistent to hold that those two statements do not hold in this case. GCC requires that developers uphold certain user freedoms (i.e. compiler extensions must be free software). Clang allows user's freedoms to be more easily violated. It's fine if you want to hold those two opinions, but if you state them as if they're the only opinions, that's not great. If you don't acknowledge that they're predicated on beliefs such as "user freedom isn't important to the expense of software improving in other ways" (or such), then of course you'll have trouble understanding why one might view clang/llvm in the negative light of effectively enabling "GCC, but without GPL".

mhh__ 7y ago

Having two good compliant compilers is great for C++ too: it keeps both compilers honest and also makes spotting weird behaviour easier in big codebases (i.e. to first order if your code results in different behaviour in GCC or Clang then it could be dangerous). Also has the added benefit of reducing the need to use compilers like Intel's (not sure on current benchmarks) but I really wouldn't want to ship something for AMD CPUs with Intel's compiler.

pjmlp 7y ago
Contrary to what gets discussed here, C++ has more than just two good compliant compilers. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support and embedded compilers, or more legacy like platforms aren't listed.
- cwzwarich 7y ago
  Besides GCC, Clang, and MSVC++, most other C++ compilers license the EDG frontend, so there's less heterogeneity than you would expect. I don't actually know if there's another implementation of C++11 besides the ones I listed. Even Microsoft now uses the EDG frontend for Intellisense, rather than their own (more incorrect) frontend.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    It is still more than a gcc vs clang thing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- mhh__ 7y ago
  As in "Free" (One open source and GPL) compliant compilers.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Well that was missing.