[qalmakka]

> unless we have a new C++ front made in zig

Writing a C++ compiler is several order of magnitude more complicated than writing a C, Java, Go or Zig compiler. There's a very good reason there are only 3 in existence despite how ubiquitous C++ is (and even then, it takes years for them to keep up with the latest standards). C++'s grammar is type 0, there's isn't even an EBNF definition of it because it's pratically impossible to write a complete one. Clang only succeeded thanks to massive investments from the biggest players in the industry, and GCC/MSVC simply grew alongside the language. All other C++ compilers died a horrible death a long time ago.

[DylanSp]

Out of curiosity, does Intel's icc compiler see much use? It looks like it uses LLVM these days, but its frontend presumably still needs to handle all of C++'s complexity.

[tyg13]

ICC is deprecated and will no longer see a release, but it uses the EDG front-end. Its replacement, ICX (the oneAPI compiler), uses clang as its front-end.

There are essentially only four extant C++ front-end implementations: GCC, Clang, MSVC, and EDG. All other C++ compilers are based on one of these four implementations, or have since gone extinct. (Except maybe Green Hills, but I can't recall anymore if their front-end is still in-house.)

[DylanSp]

Got it, thanks! I knew that Intel had a compiler for C and C++ from reading blogs about compiler research, but I didn't know any details about its current architecture.