MacPorts clang performance (and arm_runtime)

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

Some of you may remember that I've wondered aloud in the past why MacPorts clang (3.4) was considerably slower than all other compilers, while the Apple-provided almost-the-same clang 3.4 was considerably faster, in line with claims about clang performance. Same for clang-3.4 on Linux (i.e. not Apple provided): it is faster than gcc.

Just now I noticed a possible explanation:

>  port variants llvm-3.6
> 
> llvm-3.6 has the variants:
> [+]assertions: Enable assertions for error detection (has performance
> impacts, especially on JIT)

So the default variant, and the only one available as a binary package, is built to be slow and crash upon certain errors.
Why is that the default? Would it be possible at least to provide the version without assertions in binary too?

Same with +arm_runtime, btw. I don't know how useful a MacPorts compiler is for building for arm (iOS development I presume), and how many people do that, but it'd be nice to have a binary version without. I can remember having had issues with the presence of an arm runtime in the past.

Cheers,
René