[cfe-dev] General questions

[steve naroff]

On Sep 1, 2008, at 3:15 PM, John Graley wrote:

>
> Hi there
>
> I just have some general questions about the Clang project and its  
> direction:
>
> - What's your relationship to the LLVM project at present? You  
> appear to use
> llvm code, but only as general helper libraries (like STL and Boost)  
> as far
> as I can see. Certainly, your intermediate representations seem to  
> be your
> own, making Clang independent in theory, if not practice. There's no  
> mention
> of Clang on the LLVM website - instead they say they're using a  
> modified GCC
> (even though they're a BSD licensed project).
>

See http://clang.llvm.org/ for goals (and our relationship with llvm).  
llvm-gcc is currently much more mature for day to day development (and  
it fully supports C++). As clang matures, the LLVM website will likely  
contain more direct references.

> - There are lots of target applications for Clang including automated
> refactoring, static analysis and as a compiler front end. What are  
> your
> priorities? There's lots going on in the lists - where is most of  
> this work
> leading? Is objective-C considered more important than C++, for  
> example?
>

Static analysis, refactoring, and native code compilation are all  
under active development. Pushing on these application areas  helps  
drive bug fixes/features in the "core" front-end.

Objective-C is a far simpler language to implement than C++. Getting  
clang to do a great job with C/ObjC is a useful stepping stone toward C 
++. At a high level, C, ObjC, and C++ are all very important to us.  
Unfortunately, implementing all of C++ is a huge job.

> - Is the source in the "brose source" up-to-date or is it some way  
> behind the
> bleeding edge in subversion?
>

It's up-to-date.

> Thanks, John
>

Thanks for your interest in clang!

snaroff

> -- 
> John Graley
> Cambridge, UK
> Tel: 07976 892045
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