Fedora To Remain Monogamist Towards GCC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora To Remain Monogamist Towards GCC

While FreeBSD 10 is preparing to fully switch to LLVM's Clang compiler and deprecate GCC, don't expect such a compiler change to happen in the Fedora camp in the foreseeable future. Fedora engineers have issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to GCC and stance on "alternative compilers" within this Red Hat distribution...

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

[uid313]

I think LLVM does have future potential.
But right now, I do think GCC produces better results in the real world.

I think they should keep on using GCC, while also compiling everything with LLVM to make sure everything compiles cleanly.
Compiling with more than one compiler makes it better.

[spykes]

A wise decision from RH engineers.
While LLVM has some tractions in the JIT compiler area, it doesn't present any clear advantage for replacing GCC in a standard toolchain.
hobbyists can still install it if they want to test their code with it anyway.

[Awesomeness]

Looks like they accidentally banned OpenJDK/IcedTea in favor of GCC’s Java compiler…

[Lynxeye]

Looks like they accidentally banned OpenJDK/IcedTea in favor of GCC’s Java compiler…

If you read part of the log it will be clear to you that the statement in favour of GCC is only valid for stand alone toolchain compilers like clang. For JIT purposes llvm is still the way to go, otherwise they also would have to ditch llvmpipe is MESA, which is not what will happen.

[Awesomeness]

If you read part of the log it will be clear to you that the statement in favour of GCC is only valid for stand alone toolchain compilers like clang. For JIT purposes llvm is still the way to go, otherwise they also would have to ditch llvmpipe is MESA, which is not what will happen.

I've read the log and yes, in context it's clear. However, there was a one sentence long policy voted upon which does not have any references to that. (“Packages may only build with an alternative compiler to gcc if upstream does not support gcc”)

And no LLVMpipe is not used to produce any packages. The policy as it was voted, seems to ban OpenJDK/IcedTea for all uses that GCC’s Java compiler can handle.

[droidhacker]

Has nobody noticed that this nonsense is all about licensing?
LLVM is licensed basically BSD, which is why BSD's will prefer it -- it allows for anti-competitve use.
GCC is GPL.

[Hirager]

Has nobody noticed that this nonsense is all about licensing?
LLVM is licensed basically BSD, which is why BSD's will prefer it -- it allows for anti-competitve use.
GCC is GPL.

It would be funny, if GCC took code from LLVM. Can you imagine this irony?

[XorEaxEax]

I have no idea what the purpose of the monogamy/cheating quip was, other than to put some sort of spin on this, but really it's the same thing as with FreeBSD, only that Fedora will ship GCC while allowing anyone to use Clang/LLVM and also use it for packages should they require it and FreeBSD will ship Clang/LLVM while allowing anyone to use GCC, it's right there in ports.

Also I can't see any reasons why Fedora would switch to Clang/LLVM, it doesn't even compile the Linux kernel. Furthermore it fails at compiling lots of other key packages like LibreOffice etc, not to mention supporting less languages and less hardware targets. FreeBSD switching official compiler to Clang/LLVM on the other hand made perfect sense as they were stuck with 5 year old GCC 4.2 due to their corporate sponsors not accepting GPLv3.

[Awesomeness]

Fedora will ship GCC while allowing anyone to use Clang/LLVM and also use it for packages should they require it

This is what I do not understand about this policy: Why not let the packager decide which compiler works better for the package?