Yeah, the fact that only few years ago Linux was finally buildable with Clang.
If you have any proof that there were other reasons besides "nobody was working on that and the Kernel was using GCC extensions not found anywhere else" I'll be willing to look at them
These debates have been going on since the mid 90s, I don't know why people still ask questions about them, it's ancient history, GCC was the de facto compiler for Linux because Linus decided so and everybody else followed.
If there was no other reason than a philosophical one (the technical one is the GCC extensions) you could have built Linux with MSVC in 1997.
Reminder: the first two decades ended 11 (ELEVEN) years ago.
We are in the fourth decade right now.
> and why are you quoting RMS while talking about development of the linux kernel?
Because Stallman was in charge of GCC and the history of GCC and Linux are almost inextricable from 1991 onwards.
> If you have any proof that there were other reasons besides "nobody was working on that and the Kernel was using GCC extensions not found anywhere else" I'll be willing to look at them
I can't cite sources, but AFAIK Linux uses GNU compiler extensions. The reason is not to lock other compilers out, it's just that some of those extensions are genuinely useful.
> I can't cite sources, but AFAIK Linux uses GNU compiler extensions. The reason is not to lock other compilers out, it's just that some of those extensions are genuinely useful.
Of course.
They are genuinely useful to Linux.
Other did not use those extensions because they did not want to use GCC, for reasons beyond the technical merits, but because GCC is free software
Yeah, the fact that only few years ago Linux was finally buildable with Clang.
If you have any proof that there were other reasons besides "nobody was working on that and the Kernel was using GCC extensions not found anywhere else" I'll be willing to look at them
These debates have been going on since the mid 90s, I don't know why people still ask questions about them, it's ancient history, GCC was the de facto compiler for Linux because Linus decided so and everybody else followed.
If there was no other reason than a philosophical one (the technical one is the GCC extensions) you could have built Linux with MSVC in 1997.
Reminder: the first two decades ended 11 (ELEVEN) years ago.
We are in the fourth decade right now.
> and why are you quoting RMS while talking about development of the linux kernel?
Because Stallman was in charge of GCC and the history of GCC and Linux are almost inextricable from 1991 onwards.