Version 12.0.1-2 is a maintenance release; it updates to the latest build scripts and adds support for Apple Silicon.

The xPack LLVM clang is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of LLVM clang.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • x64 GNU/Linux: 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)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: 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)
  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 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 dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Only at first use.

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/clang@latest

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/clang@12.0.1-2.2

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 from the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/clang

To completely remove the package from the central xPacks 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 12.0.1, from July 8th, 2021.

Changes

Compared to the upstream, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • on GNU/Linux, support for the clang run-time and C++ libraries is basic, the libraries are available, but using them is tricky, since it requires the compiled binaries to take care of the path to them, otherwise it is very likely that the system libraries will be used; thus it is recommended to avoid such use cases.
  • on macOS, the /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/include/c++/v1 was added to the include path; unfortunately this may crash some builds; removed in 15.0.7-3
  • when clang is invoked via a link from a different folder, the InstalledDir does not reflect the correct install folder, and the new clang system headers are either not found or the host system headers are used; fixed in 15.0.7-4

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

To save space and bandwidth, 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.

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER 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:

8e01dfb53b5d28fab720ad33cf5eaa02b33cdb37dbda3153efb4870df696f694
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

9ac47219037ecd28451ff381849ec81725f0ba7f917e11ef53b745f13b6a14dd
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

8829994535c4fe7acc1226501f298ede1c84fe1430dd56f8e68a655c1965a4a9
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-linux-arm.tar.gz

61135802324fea5cd4db71f4881975826e8e31aa79ef1ada70fc9a991937eda1
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

8c4e4f84ff3df09a88030dc60be644b7738c2c4e2d3a4ec252357b4509c7f2b0
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-linux-x64.tar.gz

681dc81f5ca4c817d0a015736a43bb8e334fa0b2757325e00c3092ef2eec1106
xpack-clang-12.0.1-2-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.