Version 15.0.7-2 is a maintenance release; it fixes the missing run-time libraries in the macOS binaries.

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@15.0.7-2.1

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 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 15.0.7, from 12 Jan 2023.

The defaults are set to libc++ and compiler-rt.

For x64 GNU/Linux and Windows, multilib (32/64-bit) libraries are provided.

LLVM libraries

The compiler defaults are set to use the LLVM libraries (libc++ and compiler-rt).

-m32 / -m64

For x64 GNU/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 this might be slightly more complicated, to get rid of the letter part of the paths.

Changes

Compared to the upstream, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • [#8] due to an issue in the build scripts, some of the less used compiler run-time libraries were missing from the macOS binaries; fixed

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • 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
  • on GNU/Linux, for consistency with macOS and Windows, in 15.9.7-[12] the defaults were changed from GNU libstdc++ to clang libc++; unfortunately this breaks some tools that probe various compiler capabilities (like meson); the defaults on GNU/Linux were reverted to libstdc++ 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
  • in certain conditions, the binaries compiled with -flto may fail

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.

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:

967e8687b3ee331adfd8e1add14d69a2b3169a65623740766040d972adfb6bd0
xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

e1ff4ae147e853382d8a3b5e6d16f7a093c1522f5e525421c9abea7333a666bf
xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-linux-arm.tar.gz

fefaed3b1325f2131b2aaaec2f45dead35e1d49c77a0de603e2158768bcd814b
xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

30631f51c7a937d2a937e6bacf76c2a745c2f863ddb6e5a6b4abb3aa461db3c4
xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-linux-x64.tar.gz

449c81324ed50a3786f4650f58a4c6572f35e42a280479a3af3782e6c6b611c2
xpack-clang-15.0.7-2-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 (armv7l) 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.