News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Chromium Windows builds now use Clang by default. Parent comment

Re:Chromium Windows builds now use Clang by default by microcolonel on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:28PM (#14878406)
As far as I'm aware, there are no downsides to switching to Clang on Windows. Clang produces VS-compatible debug info, it's integrated perfectly fine into VS. In addition, you don't need a VS license to compile the desired 64-bit Windows binaries. In addition, the code generated is typically faster and smaller. They get to use new C++ features without waiting for a major VC++ release. They can hope to do cross compilation on an operating system with a filesystem that isn't outrageously slow. They can stop having to put in VS-specific warning disables and go with the GCC-Clang standard ones. Clang is also just faster to run in general. They get to use one compiler on every platform, and when they improve the compiler, it helps all of their platforms.

Seems like a win on every level to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromium Windows builds now use Clang by default by azakai on Friday July 28, 2017 @10:01PM (#14879097)
Not a win on every level: As the link says, clang is slower than Visual Studio's compiler.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromium Windows builds now use Clang by default by blinkingled on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:33PM (#14878438)
But on the other hand Microsoft's compiler, linker, headers, debuggers are tested together for the OS releases they support. clang-cl doesn't have that advantage. I guess Google is picking up clang-cl maintenance to make sure it remains compatible with various dependencies MS changes.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromium Windows builds now use Clang by default by microcolonel on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:43PM (#14878491)
Microsoft endorses and works on clang-cl, though I wouldn't say they give it as much attention as their own compiler. As for compatibility, I don't think it's a huge issue, if they never changed the compiler again, it would probably still generate working binaries for the next decade, including PDBs.
[ Parent | on HN ]