Feature Request: Embedded toolchain using clang compiler for arm

[borbmizzet]

So ARM is now pretty much using clang as their official compiler.  Any chance we could get a toolchain using clang for Embedded ARM projects?  Clang compiled binaries are compatible with gdb in theory, so it should work, or if you could get LLVM working as a whole for Embedded ARM projects it would be even better.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks, we’ll look into it and post an update once we can ship a stable build.

[support]

Hi,

OK, we did a quick research and it looks like the proprietary ARM compiler indeed uses the clang as a front-end.

However, it does not look like anyone has released official binaries for the regular clang/llvm for ARM. If we have overlooked anything, please let us know.

[borbmizzet]

http://clang.llvm.org/docs/CrossCompilation.html

It says there that clang is natively a cross-compiler, and does not require separate binaries for each architecture:

In GCC world, every host/target combination has its own set of binaries, headers, libraries, etc. So, it’s usually simple to download a package with all files in, unzip to a directory and point the build system to that compiler, that will know about its location and find all it needs to when compiling your code.

On the other hand, Clang/LLVM is natively a cross-compiler, meaning that one set of programs can compile to all targets by setting the <code class=”docutils literal”><span class=”pre”>-target</span> option. That makes it a lot easier for programmers wishing to compile to different platforms and architectures, and for compiler developers that only have to maintain one build system, and for OS distributions, that need only one set of main packages.

[support]

Hi,

Yes, this is true. The actual problem with clang is reliability. It does not look like the community actively uses Clang (not commercial Clang-based compilers, but Clang itself) for barebone ARM devices, so publishing a toolchain based on it will most likely result in discovering ARM-specific bugs and issues, so we will have to either start fixing Clang bugs or have a toolchain on our website that has known usability issues and is disappointing to use. Both options are not very good, so at this point we do not want to ship such a toolchain.

That said, you are free to experiment with the Clang binaries from the Clang website (we can help you configure VisualGDB to use them), but if they generate broken code, or don’t work as expected, we cannot provide any support on that, sorry.

[Author]

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