4 ms·

In which we compare an open source project that people are compiling and building versions of (Chromium), with a Google Product (Chrome), and pretend that versi

In which we compare an open source project that people are compiling and building versions of (Chromium), with a Google Product (Chrome), and pretend that versions of the former are versions of the latter. In other news, GCC continues to fall apart at a brisk pace, with literally every distro shipping slightly different versions.

exelius 12y ago
> In other news, GCC continues to fall apart at a brisk pace, with literally every distro shipping slightly different versions. Heh, this is actually true. Clang/llvm are rapidly replacing GCC, largely due to this issue (though performance plays a part as well).
- Crito 12y ago
  Do Linux distros that have their own patches for GCC not have their own patches for clang/LLVM? Why would this be the case?
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    It's not the case, they have patches for both :)
  - plorkyeran 12y ago
    They haven't had time to accumulate patches that were useful five years ago but now just make things pointlessly slightly different. Similarly, you can generally assume that if someone has clang then it will be a relatively recent version of clang, because of how fast clang moved from not being practically usable to being very good. In a few years I assume that all of the various annoyances around targeting GCC on Linux will also apply to clang.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  There's also some complication from GCC being developed as part of GNU. You'd think this wouldn't be a problem in practice, but I remember (yet can't seem to find, unfortunately) a rather significant spat on the GCC mailing lists about the more hardcore GNUsiances refusing to implement a better AST (or at least one as good as clang's/LLVM's) solely because doing so would run the risk of the AST being used to reverse-engineer GCC beyond the terms of the GPL and a bunch of core GCC devs threatening to fork and ditch GNU because of it.
- krakensden 12y ago
  Only if by 'distro' you mean 'Apple'.
coldtea 12y ago
Any misrepresentation of Chrome (product) vs Chromium (project) is uninteresting and unrelated to the main issue highlighted in TFA. The main issue is: "(mobile) Chrome, and the promise of a stable official browser in Android is fucked because everybody ships 4 and 10 versions behind custom versions of Chromium, so its Android share and the hope of a single modern browser for Android users is slipping". >In other news, GCC continues to fall apart at a brisk pace, with literally every distro shipping slightly different versions. That's indeed one of the problems with GCC, btw.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "The main issue is: "(mobile) Chrome, and the promise of a stable official browser in Android is fucked because everybody ships 4 and 10 versions behind custom versions of Chromium, so its Android share and the hope of a single modern browser for Android users is slipping". " The conclusion does not follow, because nobody has ever, AFAIK, promised the stable browser was "internet" or "browser" or whatever the hell they call it on each phone. Chrome should exist on all of these, if you want a stable , modern, browser, that's it. Android webkit should also be the same on all of them (AFAIK). Past that, forcing "internet browser" on various phones to be the same would be exactly the behavior that MS had trouble with.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Past that, forcing "internet browser" on various phones to be the same would be exactly the behavior that MS had trouble with. No, the behavior Microsoft had trouble with was abusing its monopoly position in the PC market. Google is not a monopoly in that sense for mobile OSes (the vendor of something is not considered a monopoly in its own product, e.g. Apple is not a "monopoly" on iOS, it's just its vendor. The "monopoly position" applies or not only in relation to the general market, not within a single product).

exelius 12y ago

> In other news, GCC continues to fall apart at a brisk pace, with literally every distro shipping slightly different versions. Heh, this is actually true. Clang/llvm are rapidly replacing GCC, largely due to this issue (though performance plays a part as well).

Crito 12y ago
Do Linux distros that have their own patches for GCC not have their own patches for clang/LLVM? Why would this be the case?
- DannyBee 12y ago
  It's not the case, they have patches for both :)
- plorkyeran 12y ago
  They haven't had time to accumulate patches that were useful five years ago but now just make things pointlessly slightly different. Similarly, you can generally assume that if someone has clang then it will be a relatively recent version of clang, because of how fast clang moved from not being practically usable to being very good. In a few years I assume that all of the various annoyances around targeting GCC on Linux will also apply to clang.
yellowapple 12y ago
There's also some complication from GCC being developed as part of GNU. You'd think this wouldn't be a problem in practice, but I remember (yet can't seem to find, unfortunately) a rather significant spat on the GCC mailing lists about the more hardcore GNUsiances refusing to implement a better AST (or at least one as good as clang's/LLVM's) solely because doing so would run the risk of the AST being used to reverse-engineer GCC beyond the terms of the GPL and a bunch of core GCC devs threatening to fork and ditch GNU because of it.
krakensden 12y ago
Only if by 'distro' you mean 'Apple'.

coldtea 12y ago

Any misrepresentation of Chrome (product) vs Chromium (project) is uninteresting and unrelated to the main issue highlighted in TFA. The main issue is: "(mobile) Chrome, and the promise of a stable official browser in Android is fucked because everybody ships 4 and 10 versions behind custom versions of Chromium, so its Android share and the hope of a single modern browser for Android users is slipping". >In other news, GCC continues to fall apart at a brisk pace, with literally every distro shipping slightly different versions. That's indeed one of the problems with GCC, btw.

DannyBee 12y ago
"The main issue is: "(mobile) Chrome, and the promise of a stable official browser in Android is fucked because everybody ships 4 and 10 versions behind custom versions of Chromium, so its Android share and the hope of a single modern browser for Android users is slipping". " The conclusion does not follow, because nobody has ever, AFAIK, promised the stable browser was "internet" or "browser" or whatever the hell they call it on each phone. Chrome should exist on all of these, if you want a stable , modern, browser, that's it. Android webkit should also be the same on all of them (AFAIK). Past that, forcing "internet browser" on various phones to be the same would be exactly the behavior that MS had trouble with.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Past that, forcing "internet browser" on various phones to be the same would be exactly the behavior that MS had trouble with. No, the behavior Microsoft had trouble with was abusing its monopoly position in the PC market. Google is not a monopoly in that sense for mobile OSes (the vendor of something is not considered a monopoly in its own product, e.g. Apple is not a "monopoly" on iOS, it's just its vendor. The "monopoly position" applies or not only in relation to the general market, not within a single product).