FreeBSD Is No Longer Building GCC By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Is No Longer Building GCC By Default

As of last week, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is no longer being compiled by default as part of the FreeBSD base system...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ1ODc

[birdie]

"Clang is their future"

I just hope it won't be their ... failure.

[eltomito]

Demons like things slow?

Phoronix: FreeBSD Is No Longer Building GCC By Default

As of last week, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is no longer being compiled by default as part of the FreeBSD base system...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ1ODc

In all the comparisons I've read here on phoronix, Clang turns out to be producing slower executables than GCC, at least in most cases and in most cases by a significant margin.

On the other hand, I understand that Clang usually compiles faster and it has a really cool architecture meaning you can leave your code compiled only half-way in byte-code form and finish the compilation at run time which is really useful in some OS-X graphics drivers.

Neither of these advantages seems like a real advantage to anybody who uses his computer mostly for other things than compiling software.

Am I missing something or have the FreeBSD demons entered a final stage of some supernatural mental dysfunction?

[chrisb]

Wonder how this is going to affect performance - clang is still behind GCC on many benchmarks. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...m_clang33_3way I guess they are making this change for political reasons, the only clear advantage of clang is faster compile times.

[DanL]

IIRC, llvm/clang advocates also claim better debugging ability.

[Sergio]

Wonder how this is going to affect performance - clang is still behind GCC on many benchmarks. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...m_clang33_3way I guess they are making this change for political reasons, the only clear advantage of clang is faster compile times.

But, aren't the stuck wigh GCC 4.2.something? In that case, Clang would give them better performance.

[birdie]

But, aren't the stuck wigh GCC 4.2.something? In that case, Clang would give them better performance.

GCC 4.2 is still a lot faster than Clang in 95% of usage scenarios.

[Vim_User]

GCC 4.2 is still a lot faster than Clang in 95% of usage scenarios.

Link to benchmarks of GCC 4.2 against recent Clang/LLVM?

[scottishduck]

GCC 4.2 is still a lot faster than Clang in 95% of usage scenarios.

Oh please pull your head out of your ass.

[dalingrin]

GCC 4.2 is still a lot faster than Clang in 95% of usage scenarios.

I'm not sure what you are basing this on. If you ignore benchmarks that use OpenMP then the performance of GCC and Clang are roughly the same. OpenMP support is coming but I doubt many applications in the base FreeBSD system use OpenMP anyway.
In my opinion, if LLVM/Clang can achieve performance parity with GCC then LLVM/Clang would be preferable. It has a modern more maintainable architecture, better debugging, and faster compile times.