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Google uses Clang to build the kernel for Android.


Which is interesting but hardly relevant.

To quote:

> > Gcc is still the default on GNU/Linux systems which are orders of magnitude more mainstream than FreeBSD.

> So what? Clang under OSX compiling both OSX and iOS projects is far more widespread.

I'm asserting that there are more Linux kernels compiled under GCC than there are OSX kernels running Clang (so macOS) compiling OSX and iOS projects.

I think that's on pretty solid ground.


Clang is required for all of Android including Linux kernels going forward. Once devices start to age out, this will tip over time.


It doesn't increase the number of macOS kernels, or decrease the number of Linux servers (including virtualized ones, which seems fair), so I doubt it tips the balance.

All I'm saying is that, because of servers, there are more GCC'ed Linux kernels than there are Clang'ed macOS kernels, and this will probably remain true indefinitely.

If AWS starts Clangin' on their Linux kernels, then maybe not. The trend toward Clang is pretty clear at this point; could happen.


Fair point. Google is close to shipping clang built Linux kernels in their data centers (usable VM images for external users already are), but Amazon and Microsoft both have very large clouds as well. I'd guess it's still way less than mobile devices, but I don't have a good sense for how the numbers compare in terms of number of devices in existence for mobile va cloud.




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