Google Finds Clang On Windows To Be Production-Ready For Building Chrome

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google Finds Clang On Windows To Be Production-Ready For Building Chrome

While Google has already been using LLVM's Clang C/C++ compiler to build the release builds of the Chrome web-browser for Linux rather than GCC and has also switched to using Clang on other platforms, this open-source C/C++ compiler has now been able to replace Microsoft's Visual C/C++ compiler for building Chrome on Windows...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Chrome-Clang-Windows

[xpris]

Opera browser from 51 stable build for Windows (from 7.02.2018) is build also with Clang. This change improve Opera speed: http://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/02/opera-51/

[RealNC]

Does this use the MS C++ standard library? Or does it still need libc++?

[cybertraveler]

Yes. I like this. Decouple all the things from Microsoft. Dx12 becomes Vulkan. VC++ becomes clang. .Net becomes Mono. Windows becomes Wine. Let us turn Windows into an insignificant shell; a pesky detail in the vast software ecosystem. Let us make it such that we depend on it for so little, that eventually we may realize it is not needed at all. Then all at once... WE DEPART! Starve the creatively forsaken, parasitical beast of our energy and let it whither into obscurity. DIE, BEASTY DIE!!!

Sorry.

Got carried away.

This is good news though. Loads of people are routing around the walled garden that Microsoft is half-heartedly, trying to build. Windows is being reduced to just-another target platform that you select in a drop down list or a command line switch.

[My8th]

Does this use the MS C++ standard library? Or does it still need libc++?

"Chrome for Windows still uses the Microsoft linker (the part of the toolchain that combines the compiled source code into a single executable or DLL), and it still uses the Microsoft C++ library. In time, Google plans to switch to the LLVM linker and may use Clang C++ library, too."

Yes. I like this. Decouple all the things from Microsoft. Dx12 becomes Vulkan. VC++ becomes clang. .Net becomes Mono. Windows becomes Wine. Let us turn Windows into an insignificant shell; a pesky detail in the vast software ecosystem. Let us make it such that we depend on it for so little, that eventually we may realize it is not needed at all. Then all at once... WE DEPART! Starve the creatively forsaken, parasitical beast of our energy and let it whither into obscurity. DIE, BEASTY DIE!!!

Sorry.

Got carried away.

This is good news though. Loads of people are routing around the walled garden that Microsoft is half-heartedly, trying to build. Windows is being reduced to just-another target platform that you select in a drop down list or a command line switch.

Microsoft ended up helping with this by providing documentations, looks like Microsoft has something to gain from this.

[nslay]

Religions do not disappear even though there are alternatives.

Now that the abomination that is Windows Mobile 10 is practically dead... we just need wait for the PC market to die off and sink Microsoft with it. Then we'll be free. Hobbyist PC will probably continue for a couple decades after before that goes away. Linux and BSD will remain very much alive on the PC. Microsoft will be reduced to a brand name that might be re-sold to a toilet paper company some day.

The alternatives aren't look any better though... Apple? Eh... Android? Heck no! Hopefully a mobile Linux is successful.

[brrrrttttt]

"Chrome for Windows still uses the Microsoft linker (the part of the toolchain that combines the compiled source code into a single executable or DLL), and it still uses the Microsoft C++ library. In time, Google plans to switch to the LLVM linker and may use Clang C++ library, too."

Yup, last time I checked a few months back it could only link the most basic hello world type stuff, and choked on PDB generation (but llvm guys have done a _lot_ of work in this area thankfully). I'm really hanging out for this to be viable so I can move a big project to clang on 3 of windows, macOS, and nix.

[sireangelus]

Hey michael, would you provide benchmarks between clang/vstudio and gcc/clang on linux ? that would be interesting. If using gcc would provide a faster chrome or browsing than clang.

[carewolf]

Unfortunately this means Chromium now have a compiler monoculture and has already bitrotted and now depends on bugs in their specific clang version. So no building with gcc msvc or even different clang versions without patching Chromium sources first

[carewolf]

Hey michael, would you provide benchmarks between clang/vstudio and gcc/clang on linux ? that would be interesting. If using gcc would provide a faster chrome or browsing than clang.

Building with anything other than Google's own fork of clang now requires manual patching, so comparing compilers is not easy and in fact impossible with official sources