On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Bernd Schmidt <ber...@codesourcery.com> wrote: > 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.
yes -- GCC is not considered old and not 'cool' -- so it is hard to advertise. One criteria to see GCC's future popularity is how widely it is adopted by academia .. > >> 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. but LLVM is not standing still either .. David > > > Bernd
