Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC

Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by romaniitedomum on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @04:19PM (#22312924)

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?

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by inetknght on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @05:11PM (#22313371)

> 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.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by favorited on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:17PM (#22315052)

Though obviously not because of Clang, the pace of C++ itself significantly increased since Clang was introduced.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by pjmlp on Thursday February 13, 2020 @02:45AM (#22316039)

However, because Clang, we have finally IDEs caughting up with Energize C++ and VA for C++ v4 ideas, a couple of decades after they shown what would be possible with C++ when one isn't constrained to UNIX mentality of development.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by inetknght on Thursday February 13, 2020 @09:49AM (#22318104)

What do you mean?

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by pjmlp on Thursday February 13, 2020 @11:21AM (#22318906)

I mean this,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk

http://dreamsongs.com/Files/Energize.pdf

http://www.edm2.com/index.php/VisualAge_C%2B%2B_4.0_Review

Basically Smalltalk like development experience, just for C++. Too advanced for early 90's computers (it demanded very high end hardware).

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by jhasse on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @05:49PM (#22313660)

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.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by cycloptic on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:58PM (#22315218)

Neither of those are significant -- both can be forked if it becomes necessary. GCC has a long history of forks, and half the reason clang is becoming popular is because the downstream vendors didn't like GPL and wanted to make proprietary forks.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by pjmlp on Thursday February 13, 2020 @02:46AM (#22316047)

And GCC only became popular because UNIX vendors, starting with Sun, decided to sell the UNIX SDK separately from the base OS.

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Re:Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE Parity Between Clang and GCC by romaniitedomum on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @08:55PM (#22314682)

Not literal copying, no, since the two codebases differ substantially, but they can look at the code for what the other has done to see how they did it and they can re-implement it without fear of patent infringement claims.

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