Last week we compared LLVM and Clang against GCC following the release of GCC 4.5 and found the newer compiler infrastructure that's sponsored by Apple to not perform as well as the GNU Compiler Collection in a number of areas at this time, but today LLVM 2.7 is out. Version 2.7 of the Low-Level Virtual Machine brings forward many improvements to both core LLVM itself and the Clang compiler front-end.

Clang 1.1 in LLVM 2.7 now has the C++ support self-hosting itself, an updated Objective-C ABI on non-Darwin platforms, Clang now supports the ARM architecture with Linux and Darwin ABIs, the Clang static analyzer has picked up many major improvements, DragonEgg is now out and is a port of llvm-gcc to gcc-4.5 and uses GCC's new plug-in architecture, and many other improvements are to be found throughout the LLVM stack.

The detailed release notes for LLVM 2.7 covering most of the changes can be found at LLVM.org.