LLVM Replaces libstdc++ Library With libc++

Written by Michael Larabel in LLVM on 16 May 2010 at 10:24 AM EDT. 103 Comments
LLVM
The LLVM compiler infrastructure project has Clang as a compiler front-end to compile C, Objective-C, and C++ programs as an alternative to GCC. However, the Low-Level Virtual Machine is now doing more and replacing bigger portions of the GCC tool-chain with new components. The LLVM project has introduced libc++ as a replacement for the GNU libstdc++ standard library.

LLVM's C++ standard library is libc++ and it's targeting the C++0x standard. Also separating it from libstdc++ is that it's being licensed under a BSD-style license like LLVM itself. Some of the other LLVM libc++ features beyond conforming to C++0x is fast execution, minimal memory use, faster compile times, and ABI compatibility with GCC's libstdc++ for some low-level features.

The libc++ library is being supported by Apple and at the moment this library is only supported on Mac OS X i386/x86_64, but Linux support is likely not too far out. The project page for LLVM's new C++ standard library can be found at libcxx.llvm.org. There's some tests on the mailing list showing it being much faster than libstdc++: 5 seconds versus 22 seconds.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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