Daniels, Marcus G
2013-Jan-10 22:46 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
>> Bah, they can install Mingw binaries.> Sure! Actually, I wonder why people care about Visual Studio at all.Basic MSVC linkage should work with Mingw. Anything that doesn't work is probably something that ultimately needs to be understood on the clang/llvm side for the sake of clean integration. IMO, a compatible & mature open source Windows toolchain like Mingw that mostly works is a better apparatus for understanding and fixing real technical integration problems (in LLVM and clang) than a proprietary compiler. Anyway, I thought the question here amounted to how to ensure that people can make binaries of LLVM libraries and a working clang executable on Windows. Mingw can do that. Or some enterprising person can just distribute a binary distribution like has been done for years with Mingw. Whether LLVM and clang can perfectly target Windows is a separate issue that making LLVM & clang source code friendly to Visual Studio can't really help with anyway. Marcus
Justin Holewinski
2013-Jan-10 22:57 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Daniels, Marcus G <mdaniels at lanl.gov>wrote:> > > >> Bah, they can install Mingw binaries. > > > Sure! Actually, I wonder why people care about Visual Studio at all. > > Basic MSVC linkage should work with Mingw. Anything that doesn't work is > probably something that ultimately needs to be understood on the clang/llvm > side for the sake of clean integration. IMO, a compatible & mature open > source Windows toolchain like Mingw that mostly works is a better apparatus > for understanding and fixing real technical integration problems (in LLVM > and clang) than a proprietary compiler. >At the C level, yes. At the C++ level, not really.> > Anyway, I thought the question here amounted to how to ensure that people > can make binaries of LLVM libraries and a working clang executable on > Windows. Mingw can do that. Or some enterprising person can just > distribute a binary distribution like has been done for years with Mingw. >The problem is that LLVM is a C++ library. You cannot build it with MinGW and then consume the libraries with MSVC. If you want (need?) to compile your application with MSVC, then you have to build LLVM with MSVC too.> > Whether LLVM and clang can perfectly target Windows is a separate issue > that making LLVM & clang source code friendly to Visual Studio can't really > help with anyway. > > Marcus > > > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu > http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev >-- Thanks, Justin Holewinski -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20130110/1dbb080d/attachment.html>
Daniels, Marcus G
2013-Jan-10 23:07 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
On Jan 10, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Justin Holewinski wrote:> The problem is that LLVM is a C++ library. You cannot build it with MinGW and then consume the libraries with MSVC. If you want (need?) to compile your application with MSVC, then you have to build LLVM with MSVC too. >Well then, normalize the crucial interfaces to a extern "C" ABI, or the reverse, abstract the Windows side API to something well behaved. Heck, use COM to glue things together. Sooner or later Microsoft will come around. Marcus
Óscar Fuentes
2013-Jan-10 23:45 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
"Daniels, Marcus G" <mdaniels at lanl.gov> writes: [snip] It is obvious that you don't develop C++ software on Windows for a living.
Justin Holewinski
2013-Jan-11 13:02 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
Alright, trying to get this conversation back on track... It seems as though the question to ask is: do the benefits of the C++11 features we want outweigh the cost of alienating users of older compilers? For Mac, the question seems almost moot since clang is a fully-supported compiler. On Linux, it is most often (always?) possible to bootstrap clang or a newer GCC, so a baseline like 4.5/4.6 does not seem unreasonable. Seems like the same should be true for the BSDs. It may be a bit of work to set up, but it should be a one-time deal. Once a clang 3.1/3.2 binary is available, all is well. The problem child, so to speak, is Windows. I strongly suggest that support for MSVC *not* be dropped. There are many users out there relying on this support. That said, I think MSVC 2010 is a reasonable target, at least for 3.3. And then perhaps move to MSVC 2012 for 3.4. That should allow for enough time for users to upgrade. So, can we limit ourselves to MSVC 2010-level support for 3.3? On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 6:45 PM, Óscar Fuentes <ofv at wanadoo.es> wrote:> "Daniels, Marcus G" <mdaniels at lanl.gov> writes: > > [snip] > > It is obvious that you don't develop C++ software on Windows for a > living. > > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu > http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev >-- Thanks, Justin Holewinski -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20130111/6c5f5131/attachment.html>
dag at cray.com
2013-Jan-11 17:02 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
"Daniels, Marcus G" <mdaniels at lanl.gov> writes:> Anyway, I thought the question here amounted to how to ensure that > people can make binaries of LLVM libraries and a working clang > executable on Windows.No, it's more than that. Many (most?) groups integrate clang and/or llvm libraries into larger projects. -David
Daniels, Marcus G
2013-Jan-11 17:50 UTC
[LLVMdev] Using C++'11 language features in LLVM itself
On Jan 11, 2013, at 10:02 AM, <dag at cray.com> wrote:> "Daniels, Marcus G" <mdaniels at lanl.gov> writes: > >> Anyway, I thought the question here amounted to how to ensure that >> people can make binaries of LLVM libraries and a working clang >> executable on Windows. > > No, it's more than that. Many (most?) groups integrate clang and/or > llvm libraries into larger projects.So it's not a problem that the C++ ABI mapping between clang and MSVC isn't quite perfect, but it is a problem if the compiled form of the library isn't embeddable in MSVC projects? Once you've got the MSVC-built library, you can't blindly count on using in conjunction with other MSVC generated things. I could see there are examples where this wouldn't matter like OpenCL implementations. If there is a desire to close the loop (a Windows hosted clang that is interoperable with MSVC), it is in some sense useful if Mingw or clang generated object code doesn't quite mimic MSVC. That will provide further motive to examine the issues. Marcus
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