On 04/11/2012 02:57 PM, Torvald Riegel wrote: > However, the concern you raised is only one part of the problem. The > other is that, put in a simplified way, GCC is competing with LLVM about > new and/or non-fulltime-compiler developers. For me, it looks like LLVM > is more appealing to them, and I believe part of the reason for that is > the codebase.
There seem to be other opinions as well, some voiced in this thread, which just supports my argument that you can't do it right for everyone. Part of the reason LLVM is appealing may just be advertising, which we don't do at all, perhaps due to the deep-seated inferiority complex we have about gcc. > Now, how many release cycles do we have until LLVM is basically good > enough to be used as a distro compiler (e.g., until code quality and > confidence in bug freedom is sufficiently similar)? If we haven't > ensured that GCC is appealing by this time, why should new programmers > then start considering GCC and not just go by default to LLVM? Maybe we should concentrate on our own strengths. Improve the optimizers, support more targets well, fully implement language standards, etc. Spending developer time on something fruitless like a language switch has an opportunity cost, it just gives competing projects more time to catch up in areas that matter for users. Bernd
