Chrome moves ahead with Clang

LLVM dragon logo.

Google’s Chrome browser is now compiled with Clang on Windows. It replaces the Microsoft Visual C ++ compiler; the same compiler will be used by Google going forward for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android. No doubt this makes Chrome the first major software project to use Clang on Windows. For a long time, Chrome on macOS and Linux has been built using the Clang compiler and the LLVM toolchain. Using the same compiler everywhere makes multiplatform development much easier — you have the same bunch of bugs to fix on each platform — and Clang especially has diagnostic tools like ASan and UBSan, which Google has wanted to be able to use. Google has been heavily involved in the Clang project for several years, with the goal of achieving just such an outcome. Microsoft has worked to ensure that Windows headers and C ++ libraries work with Clang just as smoothly as with its own compiler, and by publishing documentation on the PDB format.

⇨ The Verge, “Chrome on Windows ditches Microsoft’s compiler, now uses Clang.”