LLVM’s Clang 9.0 to ship with experimental support for OpenCL C++17, asm goto initial support, and more

The stable release of LLVM 9.0 is expected to come in the next few weeks along with subprojects like Clang 9.0. As per the release notes, the upcoming Clang 9.0 release will come with experimental support for C++17 features in OpenCL, asm goto support, and much more.

Read also: LLVM 9.0 RC3 is now out with official RISC-V support, updates to SystemZ and more

What’s new coming in Clang 9.0.0

Experimental support for C++17 features in OpenCL

Clang 9.0.0 will have experimental support for C++17 features in OpenCL. The experimental support includes improved address space behavior in the majority of C++ features. There is support for OpenCL-specific types such as images, samplers, events, and pipes. Also, the invoking of global constructors from the host side is possible using a specific, compiler-generated kernel.

C language updates in Clang

Clang 9.0.0 includes the __FILE_NAME__ macro as a Clang specific extension that is supported in all C-family languages. It is very similar to the __FILE__ macro except that it will always provide the last path component when possible.

Another C language-specific update is the initial support for asm goto statements to control flow from inline assembly to labels. This construct will be mainly used by the Linux kernel (CONFIG_JUMP_LABEL=y) and glib.

Building Linux kernels with Clang 9.0

With the addition of asm goto support, the mainline Linux kernel for x86_64 is now buildable and bootable with Clang 9. The team adds, “The Android and ChromeOS Linux distributions have moved to building their Linux kernels with Clang, and Google is currently testing Clang built kernels for their production Linux kernels.”

Read also: Linux 4.19 kernel releases with open arms and AIO-based polling interface; Linus back to managing the Linux kernel

Build system changes

Previously, the install-clang-headers target used to install clang’s resource directory headers. With Clang 9.0, this installation will be done by the install-clang-resource-headers target.

“Users of the old install-clang-headers target should switch to the new install-clang-resource-headers target. The install-clang-headers target now installs clang’s API headers (corresponding to its libraries), which is consistent with the install-llvm-headers target,” the release notes read.

To know what else is coming in Clang 9.0, check out its official release notes.