Clang vs GCC for my Linux Development project

I'm in college, and for a project we're using C. We've explored GCC and Clang, and Clang appears to be much more user friendly than GCC. As a result, I'm wondering what the advantages or disadvantages are to using clang, as opposed to GCC, for developing in C and C++ on Linux?

In my case this would be used for student level programs, not production.

If I use Clang, should I debug with GDB and use GNU Make, or use another debugger and make utility?

EDIT:

The gcc guys really improved the diagnosis experience in gcc (ah competition). They created a wiki page to showcase it here. gcc 4.8 now has quite good diagnostics as well (gcc 4.9x added color support). Clang is still in the lead, but the gap is closing.

---

Original:

For students, I would unconditionally recommend Clang.

The performance in terms of generated code between gcc and Clang is now unclear (though I think that gcc 4.7 still has the lead, I haven't seen conclusive benchmarks yet), but for students to learn it does not really matter anyway.

On the other hand, Clang's extremely clear diagnostics are definitely easier for beginners to interpret.

Consider this simple snippet:

#include <string>
#include <iostream>
 
struct Student {
std::string surname;
std::string givenname;
}
 
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) {
  return out << "{" << s.surname << ", " << s.givenname << "}";
}
 
int main() {
  Student me = { "Doe", "John" };
  std::cout << me << "\n";
}

You'll notice right away that the semi-colon is missing after the definition of the Student class, right :) ?

Well, gcc notices it too, after a fashion:

prog.cpp:9: error: expected initializer before ‘&’ token
prog.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
prog.cpp:15: error: no match for ‘operator<<’ in ‘std::cout << me’
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:112: note: candidates are: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:121: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:131: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::ios_base& (*)(std::ios_base&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:169: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:173: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:177: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(bool) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:97: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:184: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:111: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:195: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:204: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:208: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:213: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(double) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:217: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(float) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:225: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long double) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/ostream:229: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(const void*) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.4/include/g++-v4/bits/ostream.tcc:125: note:                 std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_streambuf<_CharT, _Traits>*) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]

And Clang is not exactly starring here either, but still:

/tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:9:6: error: redefinition of 'ostream' as different kind of symbol
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) {
     ^
In file included from /tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:1:
In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.3/string:49:
In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.3/bits/localefwd.h:47:
/usr/include/c++/4.3/iosfwd:134:33: note: previous definition is here
  typedef basic_ostream<char>           ostream;        ///< @isiosfwd
                                        ^
/tmp/webcompile/_25327_1.cc:9:13: error: expected ';' after top level declarator
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, Student const& s) {
            ^
            ;
2 errors generated.

I purposefully choose an example which triggers an unclear error message (coming from an ambiguity in the grammar) rather than the typical "Oh my god Clang read my mind" examples. Still, we notice that Clang avoids the flood of errors. No need to scare students away.

As of right now, GCC has much better and more complete support for C++11 features than Clang. Also, the code generator for GCC performs better optimisation than the one in Clang (in my experience, I have not seen any exhaustive tests).

On the other hand, Clang often compiles code more quickly than GCC, and produces better error messages when there is something wrong with your code.

The choice of which one to use really depends on what things are important to you. I value C++11 support and code generation quality more than I value convenience of compilation. Because of this, I use GCC. For you, the trade-offs could be different.

I use both because sometimes they give different, useful error messages.

The Python project was able to find and fix a number of small buglets when one of the core developers first tried compiling with clang.

I use both Clang and GCC, I find Clang has some useful warnings, but for my own ray-tracing benchmarks - its consistently 5-15% slower then GCC (take that with grain of salt of course, but attempted to use similar optimization flags for both).

So for now I use Clang static analysis and its warnings with complex macros: (though now GCC's warnings are pretty much as good - gcc4.8 - 4.9).

Some considerations:

• Clang has no OpenMP support, only matters if you take advantage of that but since I do, its a limitation for me. (*****)
• Cross compilation may not be as well supported (FreeBSD 10 for example still use GCC4.x for ARM), gcc-mingw for example is available on Linux... (YMMV).
• Some IDE's don't yet support parsing Clangs output (QtCreator for example *****). EDIT: QtCreator now supports Clang's output
• Some aspects of GCC are better documented and since GCC has been around for longer and is widely used, you might find it easier to get help with warnings / error messages.

***** - these areas are in active development and may soon be supported

For student level programs, Clang has the benefit that it is, by default, stricter wrt. the C standard. For example, the following K&R version of Hello World is accepted without warning by GCC, but rejected by Clang with some pretty descriptive error messages:

main()
{
    puts("Hello, world!");
}

With GCC, you have to give it -Werror to get it to really make a point about this not being a valid C89 program. Also, you still need to use c99 or gcc -std=c99 to get the C99 language.

I think clang could be an alternative.

GCC and clang have some differences on expressions like a+++++a, and I've got many different answers with my peer who use clang on Mac while I use gcc.

GCC has become the standard, and clang could be an alternative. Because GCC is very stable and clang is still under developing.