GSoC: Making ports work with clang

[Andrius Morkūnas]

Hi,

I'm Andrius Morkūnas from Lithuania. My Summer of Code proposal was accepted
this year and be working on my project, which is to make clang and ports to
be friendly with each other.
My main goals are:
* Create an easy way to set ports compiler to either clang or gcc (and no,
   CC=clang is not a good way to do that).
* Write a tool to detect common problems with individual ports not respecting
   environment variables like CC/CXX or doing other horrible things that break
   compilation with clang.
* Make Gnome, KDE, Xorg and other widely used things to work with clang.

I've been patching ports to work with clang since last October, so I know my
way around the ports tree by now. What's different in GSoC project, compared
to what I usually do is that I have specific goals to achieve now, rather
than fixing random things when I feel like it.

More information will be available on FreeBSD wiki[1] later (some is already
there).

I've seen a lot of people interested in building ports with clang, especially
now, that rdivacky@ has finally announced ClangBSD testing[2]. However,
ClangBSD and ports compiled with clang are two completely different things,
so I don't recommend trying to use clang for ports just yet. I've even posted
a mail to freebsd-current@ recently, asking people not to do it[3].

However I intend to write a howto in FreeBSD wiki sometime soon explaining
how to build ports with clang more safely, what to expect and what not to
expect. It will also include some information for those who want to help us
with clang and/or ports, explaining what help we do or don't want. At some
point during summer I'll probably ask people to start testing stuff, and
report problems, so stay tuned.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or some other feedback, feel free to
mail me on or off list.


[1] http://wiki.freebsd.org/SOC2010AndriusMorkunas
[2] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-April/016648.html
[3] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-April/016990.html

-- 
Andrius