GCC driver-driver [was: Re: standard way to require c++11?]

[Mihai Moldovan]

On 22.04.2015 08:47 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On Apr 22, 2015, at 1:45 PM, Mihai Moldovan wrote:
>> On 22.04.2015 08:41 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>> Too bad Apple didn't contribute the code back to FSF. Or maybe they did and they didn't accept it for some reason? I don't know. But this is the kind of thing I hate about forking projects.
>>
>> FSF GCC is licensed as GPLv3. Apple does explicitly not allow usage of its code under GPLv3 for some reason I have forgotten, but only GPLv2.
>>
>> There might have been other (technical) reasons for rejecting the changes Apple did to GCC, but AFAIK that was the biggest disagreement.
> 
> GCC wasn't GPL 3 when Apple developed the compiler driver.

The best summary I could come up with: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4MzE

Looks like Apple did try to push LLVM into GCC, but it didn't work out. Ironically, one of the reasons was the code written in C++, to which GCC upstream switched themselves "recently". There seem to also have been licensing problems of another kind.

This doesn't explain why subfeatures like driver-driver weren't upstreamed, though. As far as I've seen that one time I actually read driver-driver's source code, it does not depend upon LLVM. May have been an "all or nothing" deal, though. (Besides, I can understand getting frustrated.)



Mihai

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