What’s up with Firefox 57 and Clang?

unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

It wasn't’ too long ago that FF had a rust dependency, and it wasn’t a big deal, but with the latest release, I was taken aback with all its new requirements.

I’ve been kinda-sorta following Chrome/Chromium development, and it seems they’ve moved over to Clang too.

Are we witnessing the slow demise of GCC? Is this going to be like the creeping advance of Systemd/Pulseaudo?

Remember how the Japanese auto industry just sort-of happened on Detroit? It was only with their grudging adaptation of new technologies that they stayed competitive, meanwhile their competitors stayed decades ahead for...decades.

Or maybe this isn’t an adversarial situation—perhaps this isn’t a zero-sum game.

But I sure enjoy the apocalyptic scenario this language paints! So: is this the fetid stench of the advancing hordes I smell? Do I need to sharpen my scythe!?!

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 724 Location: /home

I was wondering the same. Found the following page,
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Using_CXX_in_Mozilla_code

seems like Firefox's codebase is better supported by Clang. They seem to use Clang to build Firefox on Arch and Fedora too at least. Might be Mozilla's decision that Gentoo cant do much about, other than obey...

I'd be willing to switch to Clang 100 % if it could build the current Linux kernel.

unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

Thank you for the link, Juippisi.

I’m not against clang either. I do, however, find it interesting that after having purposefully installed it on my laptop for Chromecast/Chromium, now all-the-sudden my sturdy desktop (having never touched clang) sees it as a hard dependency for Firefox.

It’s as though there’s this mingling of everything.

I remember watching Johnny Mnemonic oh so many years ago thinking: “How cool would that be to have everything linked up to everything else? Hook me up!”

Alas, the now is just me scratching my chin at the latest Firefox update, wondering if clang is getting too tentacle-y. This is not the entertaining future I was promised.

Where is my post-apocalyptic wasteland? Where is my heroically intelligent dolphin? Where are the jacked-up street preachers? Where's my crazy lazer whip?

So many disappointments. Thanks for the letdown, Hollywood!

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

Juippisi, have you already build Firefox with Clang?

thican · n00b Joined: 09 Jul 2017 Posts: 8 Location: Earth

I think we might be mislead, see bug 637576.

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 724 Location: /home

unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

I might try migrating my desktop over to Clang (as best can be done). It’s either that or play around with distcc. Or, you know, write this term paper that’s due tomorrow. But who wants to do that?

Clang it is—will report.

Also, thanks for the bug link, thican. Very enlightening!

unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

Perfect Gentleman,

Just finished compiling FF 57 with the ~amd64 version of Clang on the stable branch of Gentoo:

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

unheatedgarage, what patches, switches, flags do you use with Clang?
As I understand there is issue with linking Hunspell

unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

Perfect Gentleman,

:oops:

I'm just using the plain-jane desktop profile with this in my accept_keywords:

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

Oh.
You use Clang globally, I'm not. That could be a reason of such Firefox behavior.