LLVM Enjoyed Record Growth In 2021, Many Exciting Compiler Advancements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LLVM Enjoyed Record Growth In 2021, Many Exciting Compiler Advancements

The LLVM compiler stack saw record growth in 2021 both with the most amount of new code introduced in any single year as well as the most contributors per year this open-source project has ever seen. Even aside from the development metrics, LLVM had a pretty rocking 2021...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LLVM-Record-Growth-2021

[kylew77]

LLVM and Clang are the best things to happen to the *BSDs in a long time. Now most architectures aren't stuck on those ancient gcc gpl2 versions, but at the same time LLVM not supporting older archs or more esoteric archs is disappointing for projects like OpenBSD and NetBSD where they still have to code to the lowest common denominator of what those gpl2 gcc versions can handle so for example no modern C dialects. What FreeBSD did works, but is ugly, they just dropped support for any architecture that didn't support LLVM.

[moltonel]

stuck on those ancient gcc gpl2 versions

Looks like NetBSD upgraded to gcc-10 recently, and FreeBSD is at gcc-11. That still leaves OpenBSD at gcc-4.2, which surprised me and is a serious blow to the "prefer gcc for maximum target portability" argument. I know you can ignore the OS package and compile the latest gcc yourself, but this is cumbersome enough that most people probably prefer using LLVM.

What FreeBSD did works, but is ugly, they just dropped support for any architecture that didn't support LLVM.

Hard to blame them, supporting old archs can be a lot of work, and you don't want a barely-used lowest common denominator holding everybody else back.

[moltonel]

Great to see LLVM triving. I wonder how gcc compares ?

[kylew77]

FreeBSD is at gcc-11

A base install of FreeBSD does not include GCC for any architecture anymore starting with version 13. Of course ports/packages is going to have the latest and greatest GCC, I think some packages depend on it to be compiled.

As for your point on NetBSD, I think they just decided to bite the bullet and accept GPLv3 GCC. I don't follow NetBSD as much as I do OpenBSD and FreeBSD but I remember coming across and article a few months ago about why NetBSD made the compiler choices they did.