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by CalChris 2301 days ago
So FreeBSD was supporting GCC 4.2.1 but not upgrading to newer GCCs over the years. GCC is currently at 9.2.

Apparently the reason for this is GCC's move to GPL v3. So FreeBSD was forced to remain using GCC 4.2.1, GPL v2.

As far as Clang goes, is FreeBSD tracking/upgrading to newer Clang versions? I assume the answer is yes but I don't know.
3 comments
takeda 2301 days ago
Yes, they are updating it regularly: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/UPDATING?revision=35849...
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loeg 2301 days ago
Yes, GCC 4.2.1 for tier 2 and 3 architectures only (like MIPS or PPC) for quite some time.

Clang/LLVM was imported into FreeBSD base in FreeBSD 9, released in 2012[1]. I don't believe it was the system compiler for any arch at that time, but could be wrong. In FreeBSD 10 (2014) it became the default compiler for amd64/i386[2].

[1]: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/announce.html

[2]: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.0R/relnotes.html

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thescriptkiddie 2301 days ago
"Forced" is a bit of an overstatement. Other BSDs ship with newer versions of GCC, FreeBSD just disagreed with the GPLv3 tivoization clause.
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