[R-SIG-Mac] GCC v. LLVM

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011, Anirban Mukherjee wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I was wondering what the forward plans are for R on Mac vis-a-vis
> apple-gcc/Clang. Xcode 4 was just released with LLVM 2.x. From what I
> can tell, Apple will in the future only support Clang/LLVM. For now, I
> believe they are still including the same gcc as with 3.2. But longer
> term, the move seems to be to Clang/LLVM.
>
> http://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/whats-new.html
> http://clang.llvm.org/
>
> Does R build with Clang/LLVM? I know Clang is being developed with a
> view to ensure GCC "compatibility".

It did at one point.  However, note that R is not just a C program: it 
has important components in Fortran.

The R project simply does not have the resources to treat Apple 
specially: R is written in strict conformance to language standards to 
maximize portability at minimum cost.  So whataever technology Apple 
(or anyone else) use for their compilers should have no impact 
*provided* they follow standards.

The impact is more likely to come with contributed packages.  Too many 
people write packages as if g++ were a language standard (including 
some much self-promoted authors), and their work is unlikely to work 
anywhere else.

> Best,
> Anirban

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595