Clang as default compiler November 4th

Doug Barton dougb at FreeBSD.org
Wed Sep 12 21:04:36 UTC 2012


On 9/12/2012 1:22 AM, Jerry wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:29:27 -1000
> Doug Barton articulated:
> 
>> What we need to do is what I and others have been asking to do for
>> years. We need to designate a modern version of gcc (no less than 4.6)
>> as the official default ports compiler, and rework whatever is needed
>> to support this. Fortunately, that goal is much more easily achieved
>> than fixing ports to build and run with clang. (It's harder than it
>> sounds because there are certain key libs that define some paths
>> depending on what compiler they were built with, but still easier
>> than dealing with clang in the short term.)
> 
> That is a well thought out, highly intuitive and completely doable
> idea. Therefore it will be ignored.

No, it'll be ignored because I suggested it. :)

> It seems that the FreeBSD authors are more concerned with the
> licensing language of GCC than in getting a fully functioning port's
> compiler into the FreeBSD base system.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting putting the "ports compiler" into
the base. I'm suggesting that it be managed as a port, just like pkg is.
This works fine for the ports that are already hard-coding compiler
dependencies, and mostly worked for me back when I get it a test run
when I made the suggestion years ago. The few glitches I (and others who
have done it since) ran into just need some elbow grease applied.

By keeping ports-related things in the ports tree we gain a huge amount
of agility, and lose the concerns about licensing in the base. It's a
win/win.

Doug



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