LLVM Point Releases Look Like They Will Finally Happen

It looks like there's finally going to be stable point releases of the LLVM compiler infrastructure for pushing out bug-fixes quicker, whether you're using the Clang C/C++ compiler or depending upon LLVM for your GPU driver compiler back-end.

Tom Stellard at AMD has long been pushing for LLVM stable point releases to push out fixes faster, which is becoming more important as the open-source AMD Linux GPU driver is increasingly reliant upon their LLVM back-end for not only compute (OpenCL) support but also 3D graphics with modern Radeon GPUs. Others have also talked about doing point releases, but in the end not much concentrated action has happened.

Following the LLVM 3.4 release last month there was talk again about doing stable point releases. This time it looks like the momentum is being turned into action.

Tom Stellard laid out the 3.4 stable release plans in a new mailing list post today. Stable releases will retain ABI compatibility with the current major release, only bug-fixes will be accepted that first must land in mainline trunk, there will be short release cycles with just one release candidate, and the supported platforms will be based upon test coverage of the point release versions. The actual release dates will be determined by the release manager with input from the community.

This is great to see new LLVM releases and faster since right now there's just been one major release every six months or so with no bug-fix releases.