Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#1

Post by janvdberg » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 8:58 PM UTC

Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows
blog.llvm.org

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#2

Post by equalunique » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

Have seen a couple interesting articles[0][1] highlighting the weirdness of building Chromium on Windows, so hopefully this LLVM improvement will be a step towards a smoother process.

[0] https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/compiler-bug-li...

[1] https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and...

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#3

Post by tomc1985 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

Last time I tried to build Chrome/Chromium I had to mess about with this build system called Ninja. (Which worked well it was just awkward to set up on Windows). Is that still in play?

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#4

Post by tsomctl » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

I didn't realize that clang is mostly a drop in replacement for cl, and matches the C++ abi. That in of itself is awesome.

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#5

Post by mastax » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #3

Last time I tried to build Chrome/Chromium I had to mess about with this build system called Ninja. (Which worked well it was just awkward to set up on Windows). Is that still in play?

Yes, ninja is still used.

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#6

Post by xyzzyz » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #3

Last time I tried to build Chrome/Chromium I had to mess about with this build system called Ninja. (Which worked well it was just awkward to set up on Windows). Is that still in play?

Ninja is used because it's simple, multiplatform and very fast. The mainstream alternatives offer at most 2 out of 3.

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#7

Post by tavert » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

> if your project is Windows-only, you can get a second compiler’s opinion on your code, and Clang’s warnings might find bugs

GCC (mingw.org and mingw-w64 triples) has existed and been able to do this, including and especially cross-compiling, for a long time. No need to manually download a Windows SDK either.

edited to add: to be fair, it's not ABI compatible with MSVC. But it deserves a mention and it's an easier option than MSVC-style build systems for many open source projects.

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#8

Post by anfilt » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

And why not use mingw gcc? Do they find somthing wrong with it?

Edit Mingw-w64 its quite nice and includes gcc without all stuff cgwin does.

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#9

Post by jwilk » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 10:12 PM UTC

equalunique wrote: post #2

Have seen a couple interesting articles[0][1] highlighting the weirdness of building Chromium on Windows, so hopefully this LLVM improvement will be a step towards a smoother process. [0] https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/compiler-bug-li... [1] https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and...

On HN:

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16463572

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14733829

Re: Clang Is Now Used to Build Chrome for Windows

#10

Post by bedros » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

tavert wrote: post #7

> if your project is Windows-only, you can get a second compiler’s opinion on your code, and Clang’s warnings might find bugs GCC (mingw.org and mingw-w64 triples) has existed and been able to do this, including and especially cross-compiling, for a long time. No need to manually download a Windows SDK either. edited to add: to be fair, it's not ABI compatible with MSVC. But it deserves a mention and it's an easier o…

Apple hired developers of Clang and started supporting Clang around the time GPLv3 was being pushed by FSF, Apple at the time was using GCC in their development and feared that GPLv3 would taint their code.

other than technical merits, permissible license of Clang is attractive for some developers/businesses