Hacker News Reader

Comment by KindOne | Hacker News Reader

Repo of the Linux kernel built with clang:

https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux

"This branch is even with torvalds:master." Does that mean there are no patches necessary for any GCC builtins? Or does the actual clang-buildable part live on another branch?

With LLVM 9, it is now possible to build the Linux kernel with no patches (for x86_64).

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clang-li...

Note: we also build+boot under CI:

* arm (v5, v6, v7)

* arm64 (v8)

* ppc32

* ppc64

* x86_64

* mips

https://travis-ci.com/ClangBuiltLinux/continuous-integration...

Yes, there are still some stability issues though. Phoronix benchmarked the Linux kernel built with Clang/LLVM against GCC recently: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clang-li...

Android and CrOS have not had stability issues related to the compiler since switching to Clang.

And Phoronix didn't send me any reports; I reached out to Michael and he said he'll send them to me next time he tries.

I was referring to the problems in said benchmark test on Phoronix, where Michael stated:

'The main culprits were Blender and GeekBench 5 causing the Clang-built kernel to cause the system to reset during testing while this behavior wasn't seen when the kernel was built under GCC, so likely some problematic code generation on the Clang side.'

Sometimes its a compiler code gen related bug, sometimes its bad source code. Without a dmesg+vmlinux, it's just anecdata.

No out of tree patches; I just use that repo for github's issue tracker. Previously the LLVMLinux team had an out of tree patchset that grew too large to be upstreamed, IMO. We picked up their work, got it upstreamed, and have been carrying the torch ever since.

And our site: https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/

Come check out our once-every-two-weeks public meeting!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com