On Mon, 31 May 2010, Robert Watson wrote:
I think Kostik's question here is legitimate: clang maturity changes over
time. The earlier we adopt it, the sooner we get the advantages of clang --
but we also end up being the people who fault in more of the hard-to-diagnose
compiler bugs. Since Kostik fields many of our complex file system/VM/etc
bugs, which are themselves often symptoms of hardware problems rather than
software bugs (a similar class of issue), and is on the release engineering
team, I think he speaks with some authority on the matter.
I happen to (currently) disagree with him on whether clang is ready for us to
drop in the base system, as I feel providing early access to it (but not
enabling it as the bootstrap by default) will be of significant benefit, but
don't think that delegitimizes the concern he raises. You can burn a lot of
hours chasing software bugs only to eventually (or never) figure out they are
compiler bugs.
This is the trade-off, but as you point out in your e-mail, there is also a
larger non-technical context. By throwing our weight behind clang, we
benefit in numerous and often non-technical ways: we lend the clang folks an
engaged and technically astute user community who can help them mature their
software, as well as give them a user they community they can point at as
part of establishing their own legitimacy. That engagement in turn means
they will be more responsive to our needs, and it's clear we're at a swing of
the compiler/systems pendulum where we can benefit from the improved compiler
technology we get through using clang.
I would like to see this decision made without political bias.
Is clangBSD able to support all our architectures? Does it
cross build for powerpc, mips, etc? Has it made a ports run
and does it successfully build and run most of our ports on
Tier-1 archs, and does it compare similarly with gcc for ports
on other archs?
If it is clearly in a state to entirely replace gcc, then
I say import it. But if it is not yet there, and won't be
for some time, then I would say leave it out for the time
and import it when it can.
--
DE
_______________________________________________
freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
