The Features To Find With The Imminent Release Of LLVM/Clang 3.5

LLVM 3.5 is tentatively scheduled to be released tomorrow as the latest bi-annual update to the open-source compiler infrastructure along with its sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ front-end. If you haven't been following its development closely or trying out the pre-releases, here's a recap of some of the changes you can find with this newest release.

Embedded below is a list of some of the LLVM 3.5 changes listed in no particular order:

- A merging of ARM 64-bit back-ends. Apple open-sourced their 64-bit ARM back-end they developed for iOS, which came after other LLVM stakeholders already were working on their own 64-bit ARM back-end. During the LLVM 3.5 cycle, the AArch64/ARM64 back-ends were merged to make best use of the two code-bases. Now all parties are working on a single 64-bit ARM back-end for LLVM.

- Many other general ARM improvements for LLVM and Clang.

- Many improvements to the MIPS architecture support for LLVM.

- Clang can now self-host (build itself) on Linux and FreeBSD when using the SPARC64 architecture.

- Various AMD GPU LLVM back-end improvements.

- The start of a virtual file-system for Clang.

- LLVM code itself is starting to take more advantage of C++11.

- Clang now supports AMD Excavator "bdver4" tuning.

- Clang on Windows improvements.

- Other changes.

You can also find more of the technical changes via the 3.5 SVN release notes.