Why Google Chrome Switched To The Clang Compiler On Linux

[souenzzo]

Compile chrome with GCC 4.9?

Here is a howto for google developers...

https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/chromium

They just switch because YES [2]

port clang/llvm for windows is a good idea....

[cb88]

For what it is worth... everything after 4.7 has not been very good. Hopefully they put more effort into preventing code quality regressions and improving the code in 5.0 It I would MUCH rather they delay 5.0 for much longer and get it right out the door. Or failing that Feature freeze for 5.0 and 5.1 together and use the odd releases to focus on regressions. And I mean in a larger way that is currently done... 4.8 and 4.9 have seen several point releses and are still pretty sucky.

[brad0]

Here is a howto for google developers...

https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/chromium

They just switch because YES [2]

port clang/llvm for windows is a good idea....

You GCC lovers are pathetic. It is pretty clear none of you have ever had to maintain a toolchain for an OS. Just more stupid comments.

[chris200x9]

Coherent writing is always welcome.

indeed...

Well before Micheal edited the article it said google is finding it easier to switch to clang than upgrading GCC 4.9 to GCC 4.9.

[sireangelus]

Well before Micheal edited the article it said google is finding it easier to switch to clang than upgrading GCC 4.9 to GCC 4.9.

it would be interesting to see a speed comparison between ggc-compiled chromium and clang-compiled chromium.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

WebKit and Blink fork are both being optimized with LLVM/Clang. Only a fool would expect their Chromium Client to be built with GCC. Same goes with Epiphany on GNOME.

[Sonadow]

WebKit and Blink fork are both being optimized with LLVM/Clang. Only a fool would expect their Chromium Client to be built with GCC. Same goes with Epiphany on GNOME.

Seems that simply checking out the Chromium sources using gclient runhooks already pulls in Google's own Clang build. And the bundled Ninja scripts already default to using Clang for both Mac and Linux.

So running the standard

ninja out/Release chrome

as described in the Chromium build pages will automatically and transparently produce a Clang build without ever touching GCC. I like it when build scripts do all the mundane configs for me without me having to do anything more than just RTFM.

PS: looking forward to perfoming my own Clang build of Chromium once I'm done setting this new machine.

Source: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/Clang

[carewolf]

WebKit and Blink fork are both being optimized with LLVM/Clang. Only a fool would expect their Chromium Client to be built with GCC. Same goes with Epiphany on GNOME.

Huh? No.

If you are thinking of FTL that is WebKit only.

[carewolf]

You GCC lovers are pathetic. It is pretty clear none of you have ever had to maintain a toolchain for an OS. Just more stupid comments.

My job is actually to support Chromium on multiple platforms that among other compiler also include both clang and all gcc version from 4.6 to 4.9, which is what I base my comments on.

[mlau]

"Easiest way forward" Haha.

In order words, for no particular reason, one of their engineers just thought it would be cool and made up a nonsense reason.

I thought it was only because they can freely update the stdc++ lib that comes with clang. They can't update gcc on their
ancient ubuntu machines so easily because it would break libstdc++-dependent binaries. Clang comes with its own libstdc++ and they link
against that.