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Re: Merging Apple's Objective-C 2.0 compiler changes
- From: Ian Lance Taylor <iant at google dot com>
- To: Manuel LÃpez-IbÃÃez <lopezibanez at gmail dot com>
- Cc: Jack Howarth <howarth at bromo dot med dot uc dot edu>, Paolo Bonzini <bonzini at gnu dot org>, Steven Bosscher <stevenb dot gcc at gmail dot com>, Richard Kenner <kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu>, Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com, clattner at apple dot com, dave dot korn dot cygwin at gmail dot com, gcc at gnu dot org, mikestump at comcast dot net, nicola dot pero at meta-innovation dot com, richard dot guenther at gmail dot com
- Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:04:02 -0700
- Subject: Re: Merging Apple's Objective-C 2.0 compiler changes
- References: <AANLkTi=ng6E5u+jwXKWxLA4qHp410qFY0KAdaLdvd+2q@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTinAfP73ENBGsvaXkoFeAF40jMZHtT2iubuWwgoL@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTim-5GxzHRE=7+-aFJGdKxMxTCh6Dd-=YVLceSJ9@mail.gmail.com> <11009101222.AA29048@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <AANLkTikbBocYicW=O+uD7fZoxgOZZvDjuS8J0H=9iKDn@mail.gmail.com> <11009101240.AA29231@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <AANLkTikT75OWiAY93bRxb01YuNS9=6o3nap+nB5qT59z@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTimTF1PO=n6x11AG5wR4_9asxGOC6DZuQkBnDAJd@mail.gmail.com> <4C8DFD2E.5070406@gnu.org> <AANLkTim_aROSmzLLrLzQMJzQtyvPizfV=bZVL8Z9tad-@mail.gmail.com> <20100913145516.GA1156@bromo.med.uc.edu> <AANLkTi=Wba_fJVPQq3qxQZ+6dTjPWga0rSYxR1C3vfJ_@mail.gmail.com>
Manuel LÃpez-IbÃÃez <lopezibanez@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.
Ian