On 13 September 2010 22:04, Ian Lance Taylor <i...@google.com> wrote: > Manuel López-Ibáñez <lopeziba...@gmail.com> writes: > >> From a user-perspective, there are benefits on both clang->gcc and >> gcc->llvm. However, from what I know about the GCC project, I don't >> see yet how GCC developers can consider either more beneficial than >> the other. > > It seems to me that at the present moment LLVM's frontends are better > than GCC's, and GCC's backends are better than LLVM's. By this I mean > specifically that LLVM's frontends generate better diagnostics, whereas > GCC's backends generate code that has better runtime performance. (LLVM > also appears to run faster, which is a good feature but not in my mind a > determining one.) Therefore, I see a clear benefit to clang->gcc, but I > do not see a clear benefit to gcc->llvm. This comment is of course > entirely independent of the licensing issues.
I think you are again talking about user benefits. You don't see a (user) benefit in gcc->llvm because you perhaps do not use the features that LLVM has and GCC doesn't. But users of gcc->llvm surely see a large benefit if people have spent so much effort working on it, first as a patched gcc and now as a plugin. But I am talking about benefits to GCC. Do you see any benefit/downside on adding code to GCC to enable a plugin that implements clang->gcc? Cheers, Manuel.
