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Comment by bithush | Hacker News Reader

I am looking forward to the day when I can have a full Clang/LLVM environment on my Windows machines without relying on MinGW. Hopefully this year!

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..and integrated in VS so you can just select Toolset = Clang :P

Especially with the Community Edition of VS making it really easy for pretty much anyone to get access to VS.

I like GCC and everything but I will be happy to leave it behind if I am honest. The politics are just too damn much for me these days. GCC should be about building a great compiler collection for the world but politics plays too big a part in it as seen with the whole AST debate going on again because of RMS. I just want a good compiler and standard library implementation. Between Clang/LLVM and VS Community I don't know if GCC will really have a huge place in the future for me.

for you and people like you of course . people whos care about software freedom of course choosing GCC.

Except the ones who want to do things that are 'forbidden' by RMS. Those people have no choice but to use LLVM. For example, a lot of academic work on compilers and languages can't easily use GCC, neither can people wanting to make more sophisticated tooling.

The point of GCC is having a good compiler available to everyone, for any use. Not to be embedded everywhere in the look-but-don't-touch fashion.

See also Linux kernels in most Android phones. That's exactly what GCC authors do not want.

a lot of academic work on compilers and languages can't easily use GCC

Could you explain why not? GPL-incompatible release requirements on the code produced? Admittedly it's not a very accessible codebase either.

I think it has to do with their plugins API, or lack thereof.

Clang currently supports my freedoms more than GCC with its political limitations holding it back.

Well it's coming to VS2015, just not for desktop apps. I assume that having the integration for any one platform greatly lowers the barrier for other platforms, though.

> In Visual Studio 2015, that cross-platform reach is going to include C++, too. Microsoft's development environment will include support for the Clang compiler and LLVM infrastructure for targeting Android and, in a later iteration, iOS.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/visual...

Already exists to a degree for some time.

http://llvm.org/builds/

Under Windows Snapshot Builds.

LLVM video on it from last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX3UOXAlk0A

Slides from said talk http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-04/PDFs/Talks/clang-cl.pdf

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