Google Finds Clang On Windows To Be Production-Ready For Building Chrome

While Google has already been using LLVM's Clang C/C++ compiler to build the release builds of the Chrome web-browser for Linux rather than GCC and has also switched to using Clang on other platforms, this open-source C/C++ compiler has now been able to replace Microsoft's Visual C/C++ compiler for building Chrome on Windows.

The milestone has been reached where Clang is in good enough shape for building the release binaries of Chrome on Windows. Clang offers ABI compatibility with Microsoft Visual C++, build times have improved for Clang but still slower than MSVC, 64-bit binaries are slightly smaller when built with Clang, and the performance is comparable between these competing compilers.

Those interested in more about the differences and rationale for developers moving from Microsoft Visual C++ to Clang for Chrome's Windows release builds, there is a lengthy write-up on the LLVM blog summarizing the differences and current state quite nicely.