There have been briefly existent gcc forks in the past, specifically for kernel compilation on various distros.<p>I suspect there probably will come a time when gcc is replaced. Possibly by an LLVM compiler like clang. But, the likelihood of a from-scratch C compiler just for the kernel seems very low, to me. Yes, the kernel developers could do it. And, yes, Ingo is one of the most productive developers in the world, and if he got it into his head to make such a thing happen (despite the general mood of the community being against such an idea), he could probably do a large percentage of it on his own. But, it's just a very large undertaking, and the things that we all find irritating about gcc are often the things that make it suitable for so many situations and architectures (edge cases are ugly but necessary when talking about supporting huge numbers of architectures).
If they're going to write their own compiler/linker/assembler suite, why even bother remaining compatible with C? Why not just create a specifically-optimized "kernel-ese" DSL?
Whatever the case, it would be significantly easier to correct GCC's shortcomings instead of starting afresh (and facing all those shortcomings, and others, again).
I remember coding together a compiler using flex and bison. It was a nightmare. This definitely is not a short term task. Frankly I don't think the commitment is there from the community. Not yet at least.<p>Then again, gcc breakage is ridiculously common. It's got to be tackled at some point.