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I'm in college, and for a project we're using C. We've explored GCC and Clang, and Clang appears to be much more user friendly than GCC. As a result, I'm wondering what the advantages or disadvantages are to using clang, as opposed to GCC, for developing in C and C++ on Linux?
In my case this would be used for student level programs, not production.
If I use Clang, should I debug with GDB and use GNU Make, or use another debugger and make utility?
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Clang is much faster and uses far less memory than GCC. Clang aims to provide extremely clear and concise diagnostics (error and warning messages), and includes support for expressive diagnostics. GCC's warnings are sometimes acceptable, but are often confusing and it does not support expressive diagnostics.
GCC supports more less-popular architectures, and supported RISC-V earlier than Clang and LLVM. GCC supports more language extensions and more assembly language features than Clang and LLVM. GCC is still the only option for compiling the Linux kernel.
You can use Clang instead of GCC as a compiler for any package by overriding stdenv , which contains the compilation toolchain, with: stdenv = pkgs.
Now you can easily compile the Linux kernel with Clang/LLVM , a modern C-family compiler. Nick Desaulniers , a software engineer at Google, is contributing to the Linux kernel build system (kbuild) by submitting and contributing kernel patches.
EDIT:
The gcc guys really improved the diagnosis experience in gcc (ah competition). They created a wiki page to showcase it here. gcc 4.8 now has quite good diagnostics as well (gcc 4.9x added color support). Clang is still in the lead, but the gap is closing.
Original:
For students, I would unconditionally recommend Clang.
The performance in terms of generated code between gcc and Clang is now unclear (though I think that gcc 4.7 still has the lead, I haven't seen conclusive benchmarks yet), but for students to learn it does not really matter anyway.
On the other hand, Clang's extremely clear diagnostics are definitely easier for beginners to interpret.
Consider this simple snippet:
#include <string> #include <iostream> struct Student { std::string surname; std::string givenname; } std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) { return out << "{" << s.surname << ", " << s.givenname << "}"; } int main() { Student me = { "Doe", "John" }; std::cout << me << "\n"; } You'll notice right away that the semi-colon is missing after the definition of the Student class, right :) ?
Well, gcc notices it too, after a fashion:
prog.cpp:9: error: expected initializer before ‘&’ token prog.cpp: In function ‘int main()’: prog.cpp:15: error: no match for ‘operator<<’ in ‘std::cout << me’ /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:112: note: candidates are: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:121: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:131: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::ios_base& (*)(std::ios_base&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:169: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:173: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:177: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(bool) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:97: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:184: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:111: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:195: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:204: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:208: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:213: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(double) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:217: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(float) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:225: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long double) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:229: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(const void*) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:125: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_streambuf<_CharT, _Traits>*) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>] And Clang is not exactly starring here either, but still:
/tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:9:6: error: redefinition of 'ostream' as different kind of symbol std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) { ^ In file included from /tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:1: In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.3/string:49: In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.3/bits/localefwd.h:47: /usr/include/c++/4.3/iosfwd:134:33: note: previous definition is here typedef basic_ostream<char> ostream; ///< @isiosfwd ^ /tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:9:13: error: expected ';' after top level declarator std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) { ^ ; 2 errors generated. I purposefully choose an example which triggers an unclear error message (coming from an ambiguity in the grammar) rather than the typical "Oh my god Clang read my mind" examples. Still, we notice that Clang avoids the flood of errors. No need to scare students away.
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