LLVM 2.8 is available

Posted Oct 11, 2010 14:57 UTC (Mon) by daglwn (guest, #65432)
In reply to: LLVM 2.8 is available by mlopezibanez
Parent article: LLVM 2.8 is available

Diagnostics are important for users and for Apple, but not for the employers of GCC maintainers, not for the customers of the employers, and not enough for any critical mass of volunteer developers to step up and improve the situation in GCC during the last two decades.

My argument is that we're at a technological inflection point. The rules have changed. So past history is not a predictor of future results. Once people start compiling programs that use thousands or millions of threads, they will want good diagnostics. Not just about syntax errors but about why this or that piece of code won't parallelize. It's not just the compiler that will have to change. We're going to need an entirely new programming ecosystem, one able to analyze runtime behavior and feed it back to the user to improve the program.

I wish LLVM lowered the level of fanaticism, FSF/GPL/GNU-hating

I agree with you on this. It's one of the blind spots that needs to be corrected.

This is just a well-dressed lie: "LLVM is fast. It compiles code twice as quickly as GCC, yet produces final applications that also run faster

Also agreed. I think there's parity right now. LLVM's focus really isn't code quality and that's ok for now.

The main threat to GCC's future is not LLVM, it is its own inertia.

Exactly right. LLVM is the agent exposing that problem, which is why it doesn't have to be either-or. Neither project need incorporate code from the other (and indeed the code can only flow one way currently) but I think there's something to be gained from cooperation, much more than from "healthy competition."