Clang 10 + Linux 5.6 Will Be Able To Build A Working s390 Kernel

With LLVM Clang 9.0 and Linux 5.3 together it became possible to build the mainline Linux kernel with this non-GCC compiler. The x86_64 Linux kernel Clang-based kernel builds has continued to improve through newer kernel releases. This follows the mainline AArch64 (64-bit ARM) Linux kernel mainline build by Clang too, which has been of much interest by different hardware/software vendors. There hasn't been much Clang'ing kernel efforts for other architectures, but it turns out with Clang 10 and Linux 5.6 will be another working combination, this time for IBM s390.

IBM System/390 interest in building the Linux kernel with Clang rather than GCC hasn't been on my radar until now when Clang 10 build support was just added to Linux 5.6 Git.

With the s390 patches for the Linux 5.6 merge window, Clang 10 can build the kernel for the s390 architecture. The few changes were done by IBM's Vasily Gorbik in making the necessary adjustments to satisfy the non-GNU compiler.

Clang has offered s390 support for a number of years albeit not talked about as much as other architectures. LLVM Clang 10.0 should be out by late February while Linux 5.6.0 will debut as stable around April.