Benchmarks results for Compilers on FreeBSD 11

[K. Macy]

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016, Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com> wrote:

> I'll demur just a bit on your points.
>
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 08:51:02PM -0700, K. Macy wrote:
> > "we need a compiler to build the system" (a prebuilt package does that
> > just fine),
>
> Well, yes, for a tier-1 machine; and one that is connected to the network.
>
> > I can't speak for the whole universe of users, but I think it's safe
> > to say that most users are not power users who individually configure
> > ports tailored to their needs.
>
> We've certainly tried to provide a migration path away from that, but I
> don't think anyone has statistics about how far along we are.  IMHO we
> can't assume it's 100%, or maybe even 80%.
>
> > I think my experiences on Ubuntu [...] are illustrative.
>
> A number of years ago Ubuntu and FreeBSD had barely overlapping audiences:
> end-users and developers.  With all the improvements to pkg and tier-1
> packages I hope that is changing -- the goal of expanding the reach is
> why I supported all the changes I saw being made.
>
> But for me an attraction has always been "you can build it out of the box",
> even if I rarely do it (e.g. I am not working in the kernel/driver area),
>
> mcl
>

Can clang actually bootstrap from something like lcc? As far as I can tell
you need a fairly advanced C++ compiler just to build that compiler in src
- which already needs to be installed. It's not exactly bootstrapping from
Bourne shell. So I'm not sure "it's self-hosting" is even true, not to
mention that you needed a network connection to get src in the first place.
Thus the whole argument strikes me as circular if not outright deceptive.

-M