Re: Nov 5: clang-day for FreeBSD

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Nov 06, 2012 at 12:18:04AM +0100, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> FreeBSD switched its i386 and amd64 ports to clang as default compiler.
> 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-November/037458.html
> 
> What's the plan for NetBSD?

Sorry to reply so late, but I've only just seen this.  Sometimes mutt
doesn't flag the right folders correctly.

NetBSD is in a different situation from FreeBSD:

+ the in-tree version of gcc in NetBSD, whilst not bleeding edge, was
way more up to date than the version in FreeBSD

+ NetBSD's external/ framework is easier to work with than FreeBSD's
contrib tree

+ build.sh means a much different approach to the toolchain, and, in
general, the approach to external compilers

+ joerg's approach to using snapshots of clang in NetBSD has worked
well (I admit I was sceptical at first, but it seems to have worked out
well)

+ the set of backends for clang doesn't cover the backends needed for
NetBSD

This doesn't preclude changing certain ports over in NetBSD, but given
the situation described above, there's also less pressure to do so. It'd
also be nice to have an enumeration of the reasons we'd like to move over
to clang.

Regards,
Alistair

PS.  I apologise to all the readers of the "Unified BSD" thread for
posting mail with technical content, and for that content to be of an
informed nature. Please rest assured that it won't happen again.