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Are you saying using llvm would have also made things better, or are you saying that it would be better if everyone just used gcc?
by IcyWindows 3y ago
Are you saying using llvm would have also made things better, or are you saying that it would be better if everyone just used gcc?
- crabbone 3y agoI'm not knowledgeable enough about portability of LLVM, but if it's binary compatible with GCC-compiled stuff (or can be made such) on Windows, then, sure. See, the problem here is that if you want interop, with, eg. Ruby, Erlang, R, Perl, Go and probably a bunch of others (the only other exception I know of is PHP (PECL) that uses MS toolchain), then you have to produce compatible binaries. Ideally, it shouldn't be about the flavor of compiler, but be some kind of official documented format... that many compilers can easily implement. But, since de facto this format is "just use GCC", then, in practical terms, either use GCC, or pretend you use GCC.
- crabbone 3y agoBTW, in the quest to find out how other popular languages deal with this problem, I discovered that things can actually be even worse than Python. Enter JavaScript (Node.js)! In JavaScript, you cannot distribute pre-built native modules, only source code. And if it compiles, then it compiles, and if it doesn't -- it's the user's fault.