[llvm-dev] For the LLVM wishlist

[ardi via llvm-dev]

Hi,

I don't know if there's a wishlist for future LLVM releases but, in
case there is one, maybe you'd like to consider my experience (as a
multiplatform application developer who discovered clang just because
Apple started to include it in Xcode since 10.8 Mountain Lion IIRC,
and really liked it, specially for how warnings are issued, which
really helps to improve your app code quality, as well as because of
the build speed).

Unfortunately, I've to say that I've felt a bit disappointed regarding
the build process. I mean, if some UNIX system has a C++11-compliant
compiler installed, and LLVM has both a backend for the system CPU
and support for the system linker, there should be a very simple build
procedure for getting clang up and running on such a system (at least
with the most basic components which should require only a C++11
compiler, such as clang itself, the static analyzer, and builtins for
optimized code generation).

What I found is that the build system is really complex, performs many
checks, and quite often takes wrong decisions (example: a fatal error
if the OS X version is older than 10.7, instead of just disabling
sanitizers and continuing with the build --moreover, if you manually
disable the sanitizers build, its tests are not disabled at make
check-all, so you end up with many tests failing because of a
component you didn't build).

So, if you've a wishlist, my only wish at this time would be to have a
way of easily building clang on any system that has a C++11-compliant
compiler. Even an old UNIX system from the 90s, if you managed to
build gcc with C++11 support on it, and LLVM supports its linker,
should be able to build clang 3.8.0 in a straightforward way by just
specifying the C++ compiler path and the C++ flags.

ardi