Live data from Hacker News

Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

clang.debian.net

1–10 of 55 posts

Re: Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

#2
Looks like the most comprehensive list of differences between clang and gcc. I'm amazed.

Apparently, most differences are either because clang and gcc use different standards or interpret them differently.

Also, only 9% of the Debian packages have issues, meaning clang is getting more and more worth considering.

Re: Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

#5
post #3

However this doesn't proove that clang produce error-free (was afar the compiklation goes) executables.

No one can ever prove such a thing. Neither can it be proven that gcc or any compiler for that matter produces error-free executables. What this does, however, is providing information and analysis about the quality of the clang compilation process as compared to gcc.

Re: Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

#7
post #3

However this doesn't proove that clang produce error-free (was afar the compiklation goes) executables.

No one can ever prove such a thing. Neither can it be proven that gcc or any compiler for that matter produces error-free executables. What this does, however, is providing information and analysis about the quality of the clang compilation process as compared to gcc.

No can prove it, but at least the GCC version are actually run by people - these version and created, but never actually used.

He should do some fuzz testing of these programs, with the exact same fuzz sent to the GCC versions, and then report any differences. But collecting the "results" would be hard - it's not always visible in output, you'd have to track system calls and IO.

Re: Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

#9
This is seriously amazing and will, certainly, improve all the codebases involved. Sylvestre and the others involved deserve a lot of good karma for this.

Going a step further, wouldn't it be great if all packages had automated tests that could easily be run on the 91% of the packages that were successfully built?

Re: Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang

#10
post #3

However this doesn't proove that clang produce error-free (was afar the compiklation goes) executables.

Doesn't Apple use clang for OS X? If it does, that's as good a validation as any for me.

Another (IMHO better) validation is that FreeBSD compiles the kernel with clang: http://wiki.freebsd.org/BuildingFreeBSDWithClang
Post reply on HN