Menu
I've done a fair amount of programming in C/C++ before, but nowadays it only accounts for a small percentage of the programming I do (scripting languages are much better suited for a lot of the work I do). I worked on some C programming projects the last few days and was surprised how many little syntactical details I kept forgetting. What's worse is that cc/gcc typically had cryptic or non-informative error messages about these issues (sorry I can't remember any specific examples).
I learned about the clang compiler not too long ago and decided to try that. The error messages were much clearer and helped me identify and fix the problems in my syntax. My question is why this tool is not used/mentioned more than it is? Is it that it is so new compared to the usual suspects (cc/gcc), or is it that it doesn't support features that they support, or is it just harder to obtain? I have a hard time believing that last one, since it was installed with the dev tools on my iMac and required a single command (sudo apt-get install clang) to install on my Ubuntu box.
915
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.
Clang is designed to provide a frontend compiler that can replace GCC. Apple Inc. (including NeXT later) has been using GCC as the official compiler.
Apple uses a specialized version of GCC 4.0 and 4.2 in Leopard's Xcode 3.1 that supports compiling Objective-C/C/C++ code to both PowerPC and Intel targets on the desktop and uses GCC 4.0 to target ARM development on the iPhone.
Google's Chrome browser is now built using the Clang compiler on Windows. Previously built using the Microsoft C++ compiler, Google is now using the same compiler for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and the switch makes Chrome arguably the first major software project to use Clang on Windows.
My question is why this tool is not used/mentioned more than it is?
It's probably because of history, and because how we humans generally behave.
Traditionally gcc has been the only real (free) compiler that can be practically used to compile C programs on atleast all the free *nix clones out there. It's what virtually all the base system and kernel of linux, *BSD, now probably OSX, and others are compiled with.
While flaws are here and there, basically this means: gcc works. And if it isn't broken, don't fix it. Out of this, you now have a huge user base, it's easy to get help with gcc, there's a lot of people that have used gcc, that are working on gcc itself etc.
Generally, if you want to switch a huge community from something they're used to, to something else, that "something else" have to be *significantly" better. Just "better" is often not reason enough. I think you can find examples of this in many areas of society.
clang is newer, some people will just be suspicious if it's up to the task, if it has bugs, if it produces slower code etc. - it seems to be in the human nature to be suspicious - new things are scary. Many don't even know about clang, many don't care because they're happy with gcc.
Though, if you rather want to use clang, go for it - error messages are indeed "better" and easier to understand vs gcc.
190
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
