xPack LLVM clang v18.1.8-1 released
The xPack LLVM clang is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of LLVM clang.
There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).
Download
The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.
Prerequisites
- GNU/Linux Intel 64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
- GNU/Linux Arm 32/64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
- Intel Windows 64-bit: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
- Intel macOS 64-bit: 10.13 or later
- Apple Silicon macOS 64-bit: 11.6 or later
Install
The full details of installing the xPack LLVM clang on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.
Easy install
The easiest way to install LLVM clang is with
xpm
by using the binary xPack, available as
@xpack-dev-tools/clang
from the npmjs.com
registry.
With the xpm
tool available, installing
the latest version of the package and adding it as
a development dependency for a project is quite easy:
cd my-project
xpm init # Add a package.json if not already present
xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/clang@latest --verbose
ls -l xpacks/.bin
To install this specific version, use:
xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/clang@18.1.8-1.1 --verbose
It is also possible to install LLVM clang globally, in the user home folder, but this requires xPack aware tools to automatically identify them and manage paths.
xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/clang@latest --verbose
Uninstall
To remove the links created by xpm in the current project:
cd my-project
xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/clang
To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:
xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/clang
Compliance
The xPack LLVM clang generally follows the official LLVM clang releases.
The current version is based on:
- LLVM clang version 18.1.8, from 19 Jun 2024.
For Intel Linux and Windows, multilib (32/64-bit) libraries are provided.
LLVM libraries
On macOS and Windows the compiler defaults are set to the LLVM libraries
(libc++
and compiler-rt
).
For historical reasons, on GNU/Linux, the defaults are set to the host
system (libstdc++
and glibc
).
To use the LLVM libraries, add the following options:
-stdlib=libc++ -rtlib=compiler-rt -lunwind
For LTO builds, also use LLD:
-flto -fuse-ld=lld
-m32
/ -m64
For Intel Linux and Windows, multilib libraries are provided
and can be selected using the -m32
/ -m64
options.
-print-search-dirs
Since the toolchain can be installed in any location, and the binaries
compiled with it need to access the libraries, it is necessary to
get the actual path and pass it via LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and/or
set the -rpath
.
This can be achieved by querying the compiler
for -print-search-dirs
and processing the output.
For example, for the 32-bit libraries:
${CXX} -m32 -print-search-dirs | grep 'libraries: =' | sed -e 's|libraries: =||'
On Windows the DLLs are usually in bin
, but for consistency within GCC,
they are also copied to lib
; it is recommended to ask the compiler for
the actual path.
For example, for the 32-bit libraries:
${CXX} -m32 -print-file-name=libc++.dll
Changes
Compared to the upstream, there are no major functional changes.
Since 15.0.7-4, there is a small patch in Driver.cpp that fixes the
function that computes
InstalledDir
when clang is invoked via a link from a different folder.
Bug fixes
- none
Enhancements
- none
Known problems
Please see the separate tests results page.
Shared libraries
On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.
All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally
in the libexec
folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).
DT_RPATH
and LD_LIBRARY_PATH
On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:
$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
0x000000000000001d (RPATH) Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]
In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH
has
the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH
, so if this later one
is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.
Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH
, which
has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH
, and does not tolerate setting
it in the environment.
@rpath
and @loader_path
Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool
to use a
relative path.
Documentation
The original documentation is available online.
Build
The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.
For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the How to build page.
CI tests
Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:
Tests
The binaries were tested on a variety of platforms, but mainly to check the integrity of the build, not the compiler functionality.
Checksums
The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:
e0ae40730db729ff9dabe82038f63e9e86fee26477a6f77124b5c05aa8ee17b0
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
a9874b23bb9a42b6ed582bb462c9bcb005d46bd6b246cd50dc0c8b05d0d6db30
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz
7f58d9761d05b73f14e51f71294276e4298378a7c8b0ba8010461c8d3dd6010b
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-linux-arm.tar.gz
cd406d5514a54874acbbb20c49f14803710cc86e0903a452e7aa4e9be45fd411
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz
b6e73f147a24bf3f47a1ae68de0b665f6ca288779aec9bd28d085fcc866c8064
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-linux-x64.tar.gz
ae8f323fae5e16c1e757045cfa8b3850495954a7c6a60cf8e49956b10aacd593
xpack-clang-18.1.8-1-win32-x64.zip
Deprecation notices
Linux minimum requirements
The minimum requirement is GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8. Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022.
32-bit support
Support for 32-bit Intel Linux and Intel Windows was dropped in 2022.
Pre-deprecation notice for 32-bit Arm Linux
Due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems, support for 32-bit Arm Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a little while, but expect it to be dropped by 2025, so it is recommended to consider an upgrade to a RPi 4 or 5 with at least 4 GB (preferably 8 GB) of RAM.
Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.
As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.
From 2025 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.
Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.
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