LLVM 14.0.2 Released With The Compiler Moving To Bi-Weekly Releases

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LLVM 14.0.2 Released With The Compiler Moving To Bi-Weekly Releases

LLVM 14.0.1 released just earlier this month while already LLVM 14.0.2 is out today. LLVM normally sees just a single point release and traditionally happened mid-to-late in the development cycle ahead of LLVM's next major release. But now LLVM is moving to shipping point releases every two weeks...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LLVM-14.0.2-Released

[ms178]

That's a great change as important fixes trickle down to users sooner. Unfortunately not even the vanilla 14.0.0 release made its way into Arch yet exposing their weakness with timely toolchain upgrades once again.

[HD7950]

Unfortunately not even the vanilla 14.0.0 release made its way into Arch yet exposing their weakness with timely toolchain upgrades once again.

I don't understand how some Arch developers take so long to update their packages. I understand it's an unpaid job but if they can't keep their packages updated instantly due to lack of time, it's better to drop them and let someone else take care of them.

Another glaring case is obs-studio which is always updated in the repository a month late.

On the other hand, everything related to plasma-desktop is very well maintained.

[andre30correia]

I don't understand how some Arch developers take so long to update their packages. I understand it's an unpaid job but if they can't keep their packages updated instantly due to lack of time, it's better to drop them and let someone else take care of them.

Another glaring case is obs-studio which is always updated in the repository a month late.

On the other hand, everything related to plasma-desktop is very well maintained.

you can use snaps

[carewolf]

I guess they didn't feel it was buggy enough yet.

[Grinch]

I don't understand how some Arch developers take so long to update their packages.

I don't think you can blame the Arch maintainer in this case. A lot of important packages rely on LLVM at this point, and the initial major version Clang/LLVM release is pretty much always riddled with bugs, so you don't want to expose the user to those.

The fact that we've already had two bugfix point releases for LLVM a just month after release of version 14 is quite telling of how many bugs there were (which of course is the reason for this switch to a new release schedule). Hopefully LLVM 14.0.2 fixes enough of them so that Arch can upgrade.

[sp00nz]

I don't think you can blame the Arch maintainer in this case. A lot of important packages rely on LLVM at this point, and the initial major version Clang/LLVM release is pretty much always riddled with bugs, so you don't want to expose the user to those.

Not just that, but the C++ API isn't stable between LLVM versions. So all of those packages that depend on LLVM potentially need to be updated for the latest version. And sometimes those updates aren't trivial.

[kylew77]

I don't think you can blame the Arch maintainer in this case. A lot of important packages rely on LLVM at this point, and the initial major version Clang/LLVM release is pretty much always riddled with bugs, so you don't want to expose the user to those.

The fact that we've already had two bugfix point releases for LLVM a just month after release of version 14 is quite telling of how many bugs there were (which of course is the reason for this switch to a new release schedule). Hopefully LLVM 14.0.2 fixes enough of them so that Arch can upgrade.

If the first release of each LLVM branch is so buggy then how come OSes like OpenBSD 7.1 shipped with 13.0 LLVM then? Do they modify it enough that they fix most of the bugs? Why not ship with say 13.0.1? Genuinely curious?

[babali]

VCPKG also takes a lot of time to update.
I think the solution is to provide multiple versions, like Qt5 and Qt6.

[Grinch]

OpenBSD 7.1 shipped with 13.0 LLVM then?

LLVM 13.0 was massively delayed, probably because of them fixing the most critical bugs before releasing it.

BTW, hasn't there been any benchmark between Clang/LLVM 14 and Clang/LLVM 13 yet ? I had a look around Phoronix and couldn't find one.