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Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

android.googlesource.com

21–30 of 259 posts

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS wants user freedom, not developer freedom That is the point people always miss. RMS believes that end user of software / hardware should be in complete control, it was/is never about developers. BSD/MIT/etc lic may provide for more developer freedom, but often they are used to restrict user freedom as the code is folded/packaged into commercial projects with non-free licenses

It's a somewhat artificial distinction, since the user of a piece of software becomes a developer to modify it. And to preclude modifications which prevent him from effectively monetizing his labour is to infringe on his freedom. Prehaps it would not be if money (etc.) didnt exist. It's always the way, however, with idealists to prescribe policies that make people free in their utopia but cause chaos in our reality.

> And to preclude modifications which prevent him from effectively monetizing his labour is to infringe on his freedom.

This sounds a lot like the people saying that adblocker software is infringing the freedom of people trying to monetize their websites (or maybe even "stealing" from them). And I think the same response applies: the fact that your business model isn't compatible with adblocker software, or with my choice of software license, isn't my problem.

Plus it seems extra presumptuous to claim some kind of inherent right to profit off derivative works of my software. You can only distribute derivative works of it at all because I've granted you a license. A royalty-free one at that! With the only condition being the copyleft condition: that you keep any derived works as open as the original. If you don't like that condition, we can negotiate a commercial license on whatever terms you want, with appropriate payment. Or you can write your own software...

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#22
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably a bug in libc++, not Clang. They're under the same roof, but different people work on them. Also, I would mock you for using at all but you've probably got legacy code just the same as I do.

I'm curious, what's wrong with iostream?

I dunno, I think bit shifting a string to write to a file is pretty unreadable, not to mention C already has rock-solid string formatting options. It's an miasma of operator abuse built into "hello world".

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS wants user freedom, not developer freedom That is the point people always miss. RMS believes that end user of software / hardware should be in complete control, it was/is never about developers. BSD/MIT/etc lic may provide for more developer freedom, but often they are used to restrict user freedom as the code is folded/packaged into commercial projects with non-free licenses

It's a somewhat artificial distinction, since the user of a piece of software becomes a developer to modify it. And to preclude modifications which prevent him from effectively monetizing his labour is to infringe on his freedom. Prehaps it would not be if money (etc.) didnt exist. It's always the way, however, with idealists to prescribe policies that make people free in their utopia but cause chaos in our reality.

Nothing in GPL prevents monetization, this is one of the major myths. I assume your one of those people that believes it is impossible to make money off "free" code

Further it is not about developer not making money off his/her code, but not exploiting the work of others with and denying follow on developers the work of others.

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#24
When we tried using clang for Android compiling C++ code half a year ago it caused problems, which disappeared when we switched to GCC.

> If you have problems with Clang, please file bugs!

Filing compiler bugs is really hard with a closed source project.

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's consistent to a point. He's quite silent about the hardware aspect, even though free software licensed CPU designs have been available for a long while.

Designs have been, but have actual chips been?

If you have the design, and you have access to FPGAs, I'd say that's got you pretty close already.

Edit: We were talking about CPUs, not complete systems. And yes, the performance would be poor, but RMS has already strongly established that in his book performance is a distant runner-up to free.

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designs have been, but have actual chips been?

If you have the design, and you have access to FPGAs, I'd say that's got you pretty close already. Edit: We were talking about CPUs, not complete systems. And yes, the performance would be poor, but RMS has already strongly established that in his book performance is a distant runner-up to free.

By pretty close you mean no where near a usable system then you'd be correct. If you're not a hardware person, as I'm not, I don't think I could go from blank fpga and parts to a working laptop with a keyboard, trackpoint, and lcd screen in any reasonable amount of time, nor with any certainty that it would work and not be error-prone.

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#28
post #24

When we tried using clang for Android compiling C++ code half a year ago it caused problems, which disappeared when we switched to GCC. > If you have problems with Clang, please file bugs! Filing compiler bugs is really hard with a closed source project.

I thought this aspect of android was all open source? I may be mistaken.

In any event, you can file bugs here: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?q=label:Compon...

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS wants user freedom, not developer freedom That is the point people always miss. RMS believes that end user of software / hardware should be in complete control, it was/is never about developers. BSD/MIT/etc lic may provide for more developer freedom, but often they are used to restrict user freedom as the code is folded/packaged into commercial projects with non-free licenses

That's terribly ironic, since the source code is completely useless to the user, only developers.

That is not true at all, I know many non-developers that will compile source code themselves, one that is done often would be FFMPEG where you have several compile flags that will make the software preform differently based on the options you select, This is an example of Source Code being useful to non-developers.

Re: Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang

#30
post #9
post #3

waits for RMS to get mad https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html

> I would guess they describe their work as "open source" and do not talk about freedom. Wow, what an asshole. Maybe they consider legal restrictions on how other people may use their software to be the opposite of freedom? Maybe that is the truth and maybe RMS has a good point to make, but how tone deaf is to call anything that isn't GNU, "unfree"? To suggest that they don't even talk about freedom because their lic…

RMS' use of "free" is very well defined in terms of software (see: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). You are arguing his definition of free, but that isn't up for debate here. RMS may be pedantic, but I'd disagree that makes him an asshole.
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