[cfe-dev] clang comparison webpage

[Alp Toker]

On 08/12/2013 23:20, Mouse wrote:
> http://clang.llvm.org/comparison.html compares clang versus three other
> compilers, one of them gcc, and invites mail to cfe-dev "if you think
> some characterization is unfair here".
>
> But the comparison to gcc leaves off the major reason clang is a
> complete nonstarter for me: lack of support for gcc extensions.  (In my
> case nested function support is the biggest one; clang appears to be
> under the impression that they are "infrequently used"

On this matter specifically, clang is a lot better set up nowadays to 
parse the old GNU nested functions thanks to work that was done do 
support closures like blocks and other function declarators that appear 
in funny places.

I just tried and you can get them to parse with a one-line change in 
clang/lib/Parse/ParseDecl.cpp, and you can get some degree of semantic 
support for nested variable scope with another small change to 
ScopeInfo.h and SemaDecl.cpp. Probably with one more tweak to 
lib/CodeGen you could get this up and running.

I think the policy not to support this extension made sense in the early 
days, but since then we've added support for all kinds of good (and 
dubious) extensions from GCC, MSVC and others so this is small fry.

So if there is a good case for it and someone volunteers their weekend 
to implement it complete with tests, I can't imagine there would be 
vociferous objection from current maintainers of the code to be honest.

Alp.




> , which, true or
> not in general, is not true of my code.)
>
> Not that it's a screaming big deal.  But I do think it's at least
> somewhat unfair to gcc to fail to at least mention clang's lack of
> support for some of gcc's extensions when comparing the two.
>
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