Clang built on GCC

Question

I was searching online to see if clang supported reproducible builds. I read that GCC guaranteed reproducible builds using the -frandom-seed flag. I wanted to know if clang supports that flag and I could not find anything regarding that.I then came here which had a statement such as:

...two consecutive builds of (GCC-built) Clang

My question is what is GCC built clang ? I am currently aware of only 2 compilers (Microsoft , GCC (Coudl be Cygwin/Mingw flavor) ) and the third one was suppose to be clang. My question is what does clang (GCC built) mean ? Built from source ? I would like to think that clang is a totally different compiler from GCC and Windows. Also this documentation here states

Clang has experimental support for targeting “Cygming” (Cygwin / MinGW) platforms.

What does that mean ? Does clang mean that it uses Mingw GCC as a compiler ? What does targeting mean here ?

Clang was probably built from source using GCC. Clang is a compiler, it can't use GCC as a compiler. — ForceBru
– ForceBru, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 19:29
the docs dont mention -frandom-seed so I guess its not available — James Franco
– James Franco, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 19:32
@ForceBru, To be fair, Clang supports a heck of a lot of GCC features. — Qaz
– Qaz, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 19:32

ForceBru · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-18 19:32:43Z

3

To my mind, this phrase means clang was built from source using GCC as a compiler. Then, clang is a compiler, so it can't use GCC as a compiler.

Compilers are written in programming languages to be able to compile code written in a programming language. This means, a compiler can compile a compiler or even itself.

If you don't know is feature X supported in product Y, please, read the docs on product Y. If this feature isn't mentioned, it's not supported and vice versa.

answered Mar 18, 2015 at 19:32

ForceBru

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