[cfe-dev] Question about an interesting blog

[Óscar Fuentes]

Hello Kai,

Kai Tietz <ktietz70 at googlemail.com> writes:

> I was recently reading in the blog at
> http://blog.llvm.org/2013/09/a-path-forward-for-llvm-toolchain-on.html
> that clang/llvm made big progress in supporting native Windows as
> target.  This actually sounds pretty promising, but this blog raised
> some questions you might be able to answer.
>
> First,  it seems to us that within that blog, the author often
> mistakenly implying Windows is MSVC.  In general, I assume that he
> meant "Visual Studio Compatible" instead of the term "Windows".  But I
> am not sure if I got this right.

You got it right. There is a group of high-profile developers here that
insist on expressions like "Windows support", "Windows native" etc to
mean "MSVC++ drop-in." I've figthed this blatant misrepresentation to no
avail. I've also noted that the effort invested on MSVC++ compatibility
so far would be enough to turn Clang++ into a fully working C++ compiler
for Windows development, but that was also dismissed, when not asked to
shut up. BTW, I've warned that this attitude of "MSVC++ is the real
thing, other options are not native" could create hostility on other
developer communities, but it seems that this is not considered a
problem here, as if the users who would look at Clang++ are not the same
who know and appreciate MinGW(-64).

I don't know if those people are on a show of blissful ignorance or if
there are obscure reasons for sneaking those misrepresentations into the
Clang community.

So right now there is work going on into implementing parts of the
MSVC++ C++ ABI (with no end on sight) while at the same time a patch for
fixing the dllexport support submitted by a "foreign" developer was
bluntly dismissed. I don't know what to make of this.

As a Windows C++ developer I see Clang++ on Windows as a lost cause.
Fortunately, there is MinGW-64 (and MinGW) which provides a great
alternative to MSVC++. It might be true that some of the newer,
specialized APIs are missing (something that you quickly fix once
noticed) but your toolchain works now, as it worked for more than 15
years.

[snip]