[HN Gopher] Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC
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       Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC
        
       Author : mroche
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2020-02-12 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (developers.redhat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (developers.redhat.com)
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Is it good for both, Pareto optimal, or is it bad for GCC that
       | Clang is catching up?
       | 
       | But if Clang is catching up, is that really bad?
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | Good for everybody to have a non-monoculture and some friendly
         | competition.
        
         | qeqeqeqe wrote:
         | Clang has mostly caught up to GCC and suppressed it in many
         | others ways. It's probably somewhat bad in the long run since
         | LLVM/Clang seems to have more devs contributing to it now.
        
         | romaniitedomum wrote:
         | Given both are open source, neither of them is going to be able
         | to leapfrog the other for long, at least in terms of core C/C++
         | language features, without the other copying and implementing
         | something similar. Both have sufficient developers to keep up
         | with the pace of development. What's more interesting, at least
         | to me, is what impact this competition is having on the wider
         | ecosystem. Is it leading to more features and better
         | compilation than would be the case if there was just one
         | compiler toolchain?
        
           | inetknght wrote:
           | > _Is it leading to more features and better compilation than
           | would be the case if there was just one compiler toolchain?_
           | 
           | I would argue that the pace of C++ compiler development has
           | significantly increased since clang was introduced.
           | 
           | I would surmise that elimination of GCC or Clang -- in the
           | way that Chrome has resulted in the elimination of more than
           | one competing browser -- would be detrimental to C++ as a
           | whole.
           | 
           | And therefore, I would say: yes, it's leading to more
           | features and better compilation that if it was just one
           | compiler toolchain.
        
           | jhasse wrote:
           | Clang can't copy from GCC due to the different licenses.
           | 
           | GCC can't copy from Clang due to the FSF requiring a
           | copyright assignment.
        
         | jhasse wrote:
         | It's bad for GCC, but good for C++ developers. GCC and MSVC
         | will die and there will be only one compiler on all platforms
         | (which is also the best one).
         | 
         | Just have a look at Chrome and Firefox. They already use Clang
         | on all platforms. On Windows they are working on replacing link
         | with lld. Android has deprecated GCC completely. In the future
         | it's gonna be clang + lld + libc++ all the way. And yeah, GDB
         | and WinDbg will also be replaced by LLDB.
        
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       (page generated 2020-02-12 23:00 UTC)