Poll: What compiler do you use for iOS development?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3376019

by jamesjyu • 15 years ago

22 27 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

migueldeicaza• 15 years ago

MonoTouch

twsted• 15 years ago

No downvotes because Miguel... we love you (and Mono et al. are really good pieces of technology)

rickharrison• 15 years ago

I use LLVM mainly for the ability to put ivars in a class extension. I.E.

@interface MyClass() { MyNewIvar *ivar }

@end

seurahepo2• 15 years ago

That is rather nifty, I think they can nowadays also be defined in the @implementation of a class.

I am not using ivars much, almost everything is a property. Too bad Apple scrapped the automatic synthesize feature.

bronxbomber92• 15 years ago

I use Clang (IMO you should rename LLVM Compiler to Clang). I find putting ivars in my implementation files keeps my headers extremely clean.

jamesjyu2• 15 years ago

done

eridius5• 15 years ago

Clang is the future. GCC is obsolete, and LLVM-GCC was just a temporary technology to help migrate from GCC to Clang. All new projects should absolutely be using Clang now, and any old projects that haven't already switched should seriously consider doing so.

psychotik• 15 years ago

Is switching as simple as changing the project config to use the new compiler, or is code migration/change needed?

jamesjyu2• 15 years ago

You'll probably get some minor warnings here and there due the differences in the Parser. But in my experience, it's been relatively painless.

eridius5• 15 years ago

Depends on your code. For well-written code that conforms to standards, switching the compiler may be completely pain-free. For most code, you'll probably get a few warnings (since Clang's default warning set is different than GCC's). In rare occasions you'll hit an actual behavioral difference between GCC and Clang, but you'll typically only find those where you're already writing non-standards-compliant code.

Also, if you do get some warnings when you switch to Clang, I would recommend fixing them rather than trying to squelch the warnings. Clang's warning set is pretty well-thought-out and things it flags as warnings are typically indicative of bad code (or coding practices).

dman• 15 years ago

You might want to clarify that your statements are within the iOS / OSX context. Calling gcc obsolete in other contexts might not be entirely accurate.

eridius5• 15 years ago

You have a good point, though this entire post is in the context of iOS. But yes, GCC is only obsolete for OS X/iOS development.

extension2• 15 years ago

why?

msbarnett2• 15 years ago

Why what?

Why is GCC obsolete for iOS/OS X dev? Because Apple will not be updating it in the future to track changes in the Objective-C language, runtime, and iOS and OS X platforms.

Why won't Apple be updating it? Because they've indicated that they are not comfortable with contributing to projects based on the GPL, version 3, and they do not wish to be stuck forever on the last version of GCC released prior to that licensing change.

Why is Clang the future? Because Apple has anointed it as compiler which will be receiving future updates to track changes in the Objective-C language, runtime, and iOS and OS X platforms.

Why should any old projects that haven't already switched seriously consider doing so? Because the divergence between GCC and Clang is only going to increase with time, and code which doesn't make that transition now will face a much costlier transition down the road as new features become Clang-only and as it becomes increasingly impossible to run the old versions of Xcode which use GCC and for said old versions of GCC to build binaries which run on future versions of iOS and OS X.

nupark2• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, clang (and the shared llvm backend) are still fairly buggy. For example: http://blog.clickablebliss.com/2011/11/07/xcode-4-2-llvm-bui...

There's a bug in Xcode 4.2 (the latest stable release) that results in broken armv6 thumb FPU-related codegen. It's not hard to hit, either.

Since everything is based on LLVM now (including gcc-llvm), there's no way around this one (or other bugs) other than simply disabling thumb.

I'd personally rather stick to gcc4 for at least the next few clang/llvm release cycles, since the bugs are known. Unfortunately, straight GCC is no longer supported in Xcode.

pagekalisedown• 15 years ago

Have you tried building Boost for iOS?

eridius5• 15 years ago

For iOS? No. But I thought that as of this year, Clang's C++ support was good enough for Boost. Am I missing something?

ericflo• 15 years ago

Misclicked on LLVM-GCC, meant to click on LLVM Clang.

zdw• 15 years ago

Just out of curiosity, anyone know of a good CLI xcodebuild cheatsheet or reference?

I'm used to make/rake for most things, and would love NOT to have to load GUI Xcode every time I needed to rebuild an app...

e28eta• 15 years ago

I think you're just looking for the man page. There are blog posts out there showing how to set up CI builds, which will also get you started, but the man page isn't too long and is the authoritative reference for what xcodebuild will do.

caycep• 15 years ago

gezundheit!

kristianp• 15 years ago

Gambit Scheme.

ctoshok• 15 years ago

coffeekit!

Poll: What compiler do you use for iOS development?

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