[gillianseed]

>I feel the most fundamental motivating factor for the llvm project was Clang.

eeh? iirc LLVM precludes Clang by atleast 5 years and LLVM was initially created to replace GCC's backend while using it's frontend (in fact during most of it's lifetime LLVM has relied entirely on GCC as a frontend and it still uses it through the dragonegg GCC plugin).

[Arelius]

This is true in actual functionality. But Apple's motivation for contributing to llvm has certainly been to replace the entire gcc toolchain from day one. It was just clear that having a new backend was going to be required to do that, and also a bit easier to implement in the beginning. Apple would have little to no interest in llvm if the plan wasn't to completely replace gcc from the beginning.

[gillianseed]

>Apple would have little to no interest in llvm if the plan wasn't to completely replace gcc from the beginning.

Sure, I have no doubt that Apple's sponsoring/stewardship of llvm is entirely fueled by them wanting a full toolchain which they can incorporate into their proprietary solutions and Clang is obviously a result of that (it's functionality reflects exactly what Apple want, C, C++ and ObjC support).

That said llvm was already 5 years into the making when Apple came and hired Chris Lattner (one of the original creators of llvm) so they have no say on the initial aim of the project which again was to be a backend replacement for gcc.