GCC 4.6/4.7 vs. LLVM-Clang 3.0/3.1 Compilers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GCC 4.6/4.7 vs. LLVM-Clang 3.0/3.1 Compilers

With LLVM/Clang 3.1 due out next week, here's a look at the compiler performance of the GCC 4.6 and 4.7 compilers compared to LLVM-Clang 3.0 and a recent LLVM-Clang 3.1 SVN snapshot...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA5Nzc

[bachinchi]

LLVM is now almost there.

[fnoss]

Clang is further away then it was before the last update. GCC 4.7 has made significant gains on its self and is still a much better all round choice for the vast majority of use cases.

Why on earth would anyone replace a perfectly good compiler that is guaranteed to remain free software, with something that can be taken proprietary at any point? Even if there are small gains to be had (which there are not) risk that your compiler can be closed off to you (BSD Licence) vs no risk of the compiler being closed off (GPL) seems like a fairly obvious choice to me.


I am wondering why this site is so interested in clang. maybe there are some vested interests? I can't see any other reason for it...

[RealNC]

Please ignore the troll. Do NOT reply to him.

[fnoss]

how on earth did you come to that conclusion?

I have made factual observations that have ramifications should clang become the new standard compiler.

I like honest debate RealNC. You however seem to be in the business of making cheap-shot accusations.

- BSD gives selfish interests the ability to screw everyone over.
That's fine by the way. I am NOT suggesting that you should not rely on BSD licensed software if you want to. I'd just like to make sure everyone is clear on the potential problems of using such software.

GPL does not give vested interests the ability to screw everyone over.

[bachinchi]

how on earth did you come to that conclusion?

I have made factual observations that have ramifications should clang become the new standard compiler.

I like honest debate RealNC. You however seem to be in the business of making cheap-shot accusations.

- BSD gives selfish interests the ability to screw everyone over.
That's fine by the way. I am NOT suggesting that you should not rely on BSD licensed software if you want to. I'd just like to make sure everyone is clear on the potential problems of using such software.

GPL does not give vested interests the ability to screw everyone over.

Oh no that flamewar again. Please just stop it before this grows.

We all know the differences between GPL-like (copyleft) and BSD-like licenses.

[jayrulez]

Say Apple for some reason makes clang proprietary, can the open source community not fork and continue to develop the last open source version of clang before it became proprietary?

[scottishduck]

GPL does not give vested interests the ability to screw everyone over.

Except that GPL is a vested interest in itself.

GCC codebase is a mess and poorly documented. LLVM is clean and well documented. That's why clang is exciting.