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

android.googlesource.com

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

#31

Post by duskwuff »

sliverstorm wrote: post #25
jimktrains2 wrote: post #19

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.

On the other hand, it's very difficult to build a design for an FPGA using only free software. (Until very recently, it was outright impossible; now, it's merely very difficult, and requires that you use certain very specific FPGAs.)

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

#32

Post by BrainInAJar »

sliverstorm wrote: post #25
jimktrains2 wrote: post #19

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.

The exact same argument can be made about the operating system.

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

#33

Post by naveen99 »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #17
the_ancient wrote: post #14

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.

User as a developer. Not a 3rd party developer.

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

#34

Post by salgernon »

tobias3 wrote: 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.

Compiler bugs are usually limited to a single compilation unit and are usually submitted by doing a binary search on a pre processed source file. This is certainly true for closed source as well - just redact the (few) symbol names and create something that will compile to an a.out that demonstrates the problem.

God saves a puppy anytime someone filed a compiler bug with a trivial test case that demonstrates the problem.

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

#35

Post by detaro »

sliverstorm wrote: post #25
jimktrains2 wrote: post #19

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.

Assuming you have an open FPGA toolchain (which AFAIK exists for like a year or so), open FPGA designs supported by that toolchain (AFAIK doesn't exist yet). Even if you don't insist of the FPGAs design being open (which is a rather arbitrary border then), you'll have a hard time getting something with performance people actually want to use in the supported chips. It's a nice dream, but not practical right now.

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

#36

Post by fixermark »

tobias3 wrote: 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.

Why is that? The linked-to changelog seems to make the process clear.

""" We’ve moved our bug tracker to GitHub: https://github.com/android-ndk/ndk/issues """

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

#37

Post by haroldp »

ch wrote: post #30
haroldp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

RMS saying that other developers have a different concept of software freedom is reasonable. RMS saying that the difference is important, and his idea of software freedom is reasonable and worth debating. Saying that other developers, "don't talk about freedom" because they use a different license is first class assholitry.

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

#38

Post by Gibbon1 »

haroldp wrote: post #9
bracewel wrote: 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…

Going to fun when the developers take Clang closed sourced and add DRM support to it.

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

#39

Post by jack9 »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #16
Aloha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS is nothing if not ideologically consistent. I applaud his goals and perseverance, even if they are not quite the same as mine.

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.

> He's quite silent about the hardware aspect

Probably because it's not software.

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

#40

Post by krapp »

the_ancient wrote: post #29
BrainInAJar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Compiling source code you don't comprehend and aren't capable of rewriting isn't really an exercise of freedom. You could just as well distribute a closed binary with runtime configuration options, for all it matters in that case.
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