[cfe-dev] Why clang needs to fork into itself?

[Richard Smith]

On Mon Jan 27 2014 at 4:51:40 PM, Yuri <yuri at rawbw.com> wrote:

> On 01/27/2014 16:37, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote:
> > If you want to debug/profile clang, you can invoke it directly with the
> -cc1 flag, and passing the right arguments.
> >
> > To get the full command line used to invoke the real compilation
> process, you can use the -### argument:
> >
> > clang -### -c -emit-llvm c.cpp
> >
> > For the record, in the early days, the clang driver was a separate
> binary that used to invoke the compiler (which was called ccc IIRC).
> > Some time ago, the driver and the compiler were merged into a single
> clang binary, but it continue to work the same way it used to do. That
> explains why it executes itself.
>
> I see.
> So I wrote up my proposal to make this opt-in:
> http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=18638


I don't think the reasons why we spawn another binary have really been
captured in this thread. The biggest reason is that the clang driver
accepts multiple files to compile:

   clang foo.c bar.c baz.c -o thing

... and runs one compile process for each source file (and in this case,
one link process for the binary). Crash recovery is just a nice side-effect
of having a separate driver and frontend. The main benefit is that we get a
consistent execution model regardless of the number of files passed to the
driver.
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