[mattgrice]

This seems like a strange observation. Active effort is required to keep up with any compiler framework, except the ones that aren't going anywhere. LLVM and Clang at least attempt to provide fixed interfaces for interfacing. In contrast The GCC maintainers are actively hostile towards that idea.

Honestly, keeping up seems like less of a concern for research projects. Most projects will be abandoned after providing grist for a few papers. The most useful and practical will get integrated back into LLVM. The ones that are not yet practical but of ongoing interest will have multiple groups working on them. A good example of this is Polly.

[regehr]

Many people have observed the LLVM appears to move unusually quickly. This is good except when it's bad.