Gitiles
Code Review Sign In
gerrit-public.fairphone.software / fp2-dev / platform / external / clang / 5ea74931bd7b92fd78456b6d1c8f3a88d9ea3af4 / . / www / index.html
blob: a06aa2bf0b5108b506d5bbb55b34a943a59f2e83 [file] [log] [blame]
Kevin8e8f64e2007-10-06 21:28:47 +0000[diff] [blame]1<!-- Material used from: HTML 4.01 specs: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/ -->
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]2<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
3 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
Kevin8e8f64e2007-10-06 21:28:47 +0000[diff] [blame]4<html>
5<head>
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]6 <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
7 <title>"clang" C Language Family Frontend for LLVM</title>
8 <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="menu.css" />
9 <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="content.css" />
Kevin8e8f64e2007-10-06 21:28:47 +0000[diff] [blame]10</head>
11<body>
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]12 <!--#include virtual="menu.html.incl"-->
13 <div id="content">
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]14 <h1>clang: a C language family frontend for LLVM</h1>
15
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]16 <p>The goal of the Clang project is to create a new C, C++, Objective C and
17 Objective C++ front-end for the <a href="http://www.llvm.org/">LLVM</a>
18 compiler.</p>
Chris Lattner1c057262007-12-09 08:38:01 +0000[diff] [blame]19
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]20 <h2>Why?</h2>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]21
22 <p>The development of a new front-end was started out of a need -- a need
23 for a compiler that allows better diagnostics, better integration with
24 IDEs, a license that is compatible with commercial products, and a
25 compiler that is easier to develop and maintain. All of these were
26 motivations for starting work on a new front-end that could
27 meet these needs.</p>
28
29 <p>An good (but quite dated) introduction to Clang can be found in the
30 following video lectures:</p>
31
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]32 <ul>
33 <li><a href="clang_video-05-25-2007.html">Clang Introduction</a>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]34 (May 2007)</li>
35 <li><a href="clang_video-07-25-2007.html">Features and Performance of
36 Clang</a> (July 2007)</li>
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]37 </ul>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]38
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]39 <h2>Features/Goals</h2>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]40
41 <p>Some of the goals for the project include the following:</p>
42
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]43 <ul>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]44 <li>Real-world, production quality compiler.</li>
45 <li>A single unified parser for C, Objective C, C++, and Objective
46 C++.</li>
47 <li>Language conformance with these languages and their variants, like
48 C90, C99, etc.</li>
49 <li>GCC compatibility: support GCC extensions, but allow them to be
50 disabled.</li>
51 <li>Library based architecture with finely crafted APIs.</li>
52 <li>Support many clients, such as refactoring, static analysis, as well as
53 code generation.</li>
54 <li>High performance.</li>
55 <li>Design for integration with IDEs as well as code generation with the
56 <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Optimizer and Code Generator</a>.</li>
57 <li><a href="features.html#expressivediags">Expressive diagnostics</a>:
58 warnings and errors that are actually helpful and make sense.</li>
59 <li>Use the LLVM <a
60 href="http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk/LICENSE.TXT">'BSD'
61 License</a>.</li>
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]62 </ul>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]63
64 <p>Of course this is only a rough outline of the goals and features of
65 Clang. To get a true sense of what the new LLVM front-end is all about,
66 as well as why you might want to considering using it, see the <a
67 href="features.html">Features</a> section.</p>
68
69
70 <h2>Current Status</h2>
71
72 <p>Clang is still in early development stages. If you are looking for
73 source analysis or source-to-source transformation tools, clang is probably
74 a great solution for you. If you want to use it as a drop in C compiler, it
75 is not yet ready.</p>
76
77 <p>Clang currently has pretty good parsing and semantic analysis support for
78 C and Objective-C right now, and bugs are usually quickly fixed once
79 reported. C++ support is still very early, and we don't expect to have
80 respectable C++ support for another 2 years or so.</p>
81
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]82 <h2>Get Involved</h2>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]83
84 <p>The developers of Clang include contributers from Apple and numerous
85 other volunteers. If you are interested in joining the community or
86 learning more, please consider joining the <a
87 href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev</a>
88 mailing list, or start by browsing its archives.</p>
89
90 <p>If you are interested in trying out Clang, please see the build
91 instructions on the <ahref="get_involved.html#build">Get Involved</a>
92 page.</p>
Chris Lattner29754e62007-12-09 08:17:09 +0000[diff] [blame]93 </div>
Kevin8e8f64e2007-10-06 21:28:47 +0000[diff] [blame]94</body>
Chris Lattner5ea74932007-12-09 09:05:23 +0000[diff] [blame^]95</html>