LLVM Begins Gaining Ground On Windows

While the LLVM compiler infrastructure is supported to some extent on Microsoft Windows, the main focus of LLVM development has been -- and continues to be -- around Linux and OS X support. However, with a recent push, the LLVM toolchain is beginning to make more serious progress on Windows.

Developers at Google and other companies have been pushing for the LLVM toolchain on Windows with a fully-native development experience. LLVM works with Microsoft Visual Studio and native Windows C++ code. It was announced just on Thursday of this week that it's now possible to build trivial C++ applications with LLVM/Clang that can link against native C++ libraries and they actually work.

Chandler Carruth of the Clang compiler team at Google wrote on the LLVM project blog, "This is a huge milestone for the project, and something we’re really excited to be talking more about. Lots of folks in the LLVM project came together to get the open source project here. Thanks to every single one of you."

The LLVM project is also beginning to put up an alpha-build website for Windows binaries of the various LLVM components including Clang and the LLD linker. There's still a lot of work left, but Google and other LLVM stakeholders appear to be committed to making LLVM a first-rate compiler toolchain on Windows.

This is worth noting since LLVM is open-source after all and the more developers that end up moving from Microsoft Visual Studio and its MSVC compiler to a native LLVM stack is a big win for open-source and greater OS portability. LLVM also offers a lot of interesting features and capabilities for developers like its fast-growing LLDB debugger that has been wooing game developers.