Clang vs Other Compilers

Building an entirely new compiler front-end is a big task, and it isn't always clear to people why we decided to do this. Here we compare clang and its goals to other open source compiler front-ends that are available. We restrict the discussion to very specific technical points to avoid controversy where possible. Also, since software is infinitely mutable, so focus on architectural issues that are impractical to fix without a major rewrite, instead of talking about little details that can be fixed with a reasonable amount of effort.

The goal of this list is to describe how differences in goals lead to different strengths and weaknesses, not to make some compiler look bad. This will hopefully help you to evaluate whether using clang is a good idea for your specific goals.

Please email cfe-dev if you think we should add another compiler to this list or if you think some characterization is unfair here.

Clang vs GCC (GNU Compiler Collection)

Pro's of GCC vs clang:

• GCC supports languages that clang does not aim to, such as Java, Ada, FORTRAN, etc.
• GCC front-ends are very mature and already support C/C++/ObjC and all the variants we are interested in. clang's support for C++ in particular is nowhere near what GCC supports.
• GCC is popular and widely adopted.
• GCC does not require a C++ compiler to build it.

Pro's of clang vs GCC:

• The Clang ASTs and design are intended to be easily understandable to anyone who is familiar with the languages involved and who have a basic understanding of how a compiler works. GCC has a very old codebase which presents a steep learning curve to new developers.
• Clang is designed as an API from its inception, allowing it to be reused by source analysis tools, refactoring, IDEs (etc) as well as for code generation. GCC is built as a monolithic static compiler, which makes it extremely difficult to use as an API and integrate into other tools. Further, its historic design and current policy makes it difficult to decouple the front-end from the rest of the compiler.
• Various GCC design decisions make it very difficult to reuse: its build system is difficult to modify, you can't link multiple targets into one binary, you can't link multiple front-ends into one binary, it uses a custom garbage collector, uses global variables extensively, is not reentrant or multi-threadable, etc. Clang has none of these problems.
• For every token, clang tracks information about where it was written and where it was ultimately expanded into if it was involved in a macro. GCC does not track information about macro instantiations when parsing source code. This makes it very difficult for source rewriting tools (e.g. for refactoring) to work in the presence of (even simple) macros.
• Clang does not implicitly simplify code as it parses it like GCC does. Doing so causes many problems for source analysis tools: as one simple example, if you write "x-x" in your source code, the GCC AST will contain "0", with no mention of 'x'. This is extremely bad for a refactoring tool that wants to rename 'x'.
• GCC does not have a way to serialize the AST of a file out to disk and read it back into another program. Its PCH mechanism is architecturally only able to read the dump back into the exact same executable as the one that produced it.
• Clang is much faster and uses far less memory than GCC.
• Clang aims to provide extremely clear and concise diagnostics (error and warning messages), and includes support for expressive diagnostics. GCC's warnings are acceptable, but are often confusing and it does not support expressive diagnostics. Clang also preserves typedefs in diagnostics consistently.
• GCC is licensed under the GPL license. clang uses a BSD license, which allows it to be used by projects that do not themselves want to be GPL.
• Clang inherits a number of features from its use of LLVM as a backend, including support for a bytecode representation for intermediate code, pluggable optimizers, link-time optimization support, Just-In-Time compilation, etc.

Clang vs Elsa (Elkhound-based C++ Parser)

Pro's of Elsa vs clang:

• Elsa's support for C++ is far beyond what clang provides. If you need C++ support in the next year, Elsa is a great way to get it. That said, Elsa is missing important support for templates and other pieces: for example, it is not capable of compiling the GCC STL headers from any version newer than GCC 3.4.
• Elsa's parser and AST is designed to be easily extensible by adding grammar rules. Clang has a very simple and easily hackable parser, but requires you to write C++ code to do it.

Pro's of clang vs Elsa:

• The Elsa community is extremely small and major development work seems to have ceased in 2005, though it continues to be used by other projects (e.g. Oink). Clang has a vibrant community including developers that are paid to work on it full time.
• Elsa is not built as a stack of reusable libraries like clang is. It is very difficult to use part of elsa without the whole front-end. For example, you cannot use Elsa to parse C/ObjC code without building an AST. You can do this in Clang and it is much faster than building an AST.
• Elsa does not have an integrated preprocessor, which makes it extremely difficult to accurately map from a source location in the AST back to its original position before preprocessing. Like GCC, it does not keep track of macro expansions.
• Elsa is slower and uses more memory than GCC, which requires far more space and time than clang.
• Elsa only does partial semantic analysis. It is intended to work on code that is already validated by GCC, so it does not do many semantic checks required by the languages it implements.
• Elsa does not support Objective-C.
• Elsa does not support native code generation.

Clang vs PCC (Portable C Compiler)

Pro's of PCC vs clang:

• The PCC source base is very small and builds quickly with just a C compiler.

Pro's of clang vs PCC:

• PCC dates from the 1970's and has been dormant for most of that time. The clang + llvm community are very active.
• PCC doesn't support C99, Objective-C, and doesn't aim to support C++.
• PCC's code generation is very limited compared to LLVM, it produces very inefficient code and does not support many important targets.
• Like Elsa, PCC's does not have an integrated preprocessor, making it extremely difficult to use it for source analysis tools.