FreeBSD has removed GCC from its base system

Point of order: removed GCC &#x2F;from the base system&#x2F;. Ports still have a range of GCCs and some ports still depend on GCC. The GCC in base was well over a decade old, and it was that particular version for the same reason macOS shipped an ancient version of bash for a decade: it was the last one licensed under GPLv2.<p>This is effectively an administrative change. (Not to downplay the work!)

The title is highly misleading. First, it&#x27;s the ancient GCC 4.2.1 from 2007. Next, it&#x27;s removed from the FreeBSD build system, which means it&#x27;s no longer used in the internal development of FreeBSD and you can no longer build FreeBSD with GCC. Meanwhile, GCC is still maintained for userspace and the latest GCC 9 is included in the FreeBSD Port [0], you can install it on your machine for your personal use. Finally, the commit message said &quot;At this time all supported architectures either use in-tree Clang, or rely on external toolchain (i.e., a contemporary GCC version from ports)&quot;, so I assume even with GCC support removed, you can still build FreeBSD, if you insist, with an external copy of modern GCC.<p>Suggested alternative title: FreeBSD has Removed GCC from Build Infrastructure.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;freebsd&#x2F;freebsd-ports&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;Mk&#x2F;bsd.gcc.mk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;freebsd&#x2F;freebsd-ports&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;Mk&#x2F;bsd....</a>

I don&#x27;t know the whole space well, but there are posts about FreeBSD and IBM today moving to clang.<p>Is there some tipping point where gcc has too few significant end users to stay relevant? I&#x27;d hate to lose the diversity.

I removed GCC from AOSP a month ago.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;android-review.googlesource.com&#x2F;q&#x2F;topic:%22rm_gcc%22+(status:open%20OR%20status:merged)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;android-review.googlesource.com&#x2F;q&#x2F;topic:%22rm_gcc%22...</a>

So FreeBSD was supporting GCC 4.2.1 but not upgrading to newer GCCs over the years. GCC is currently at 9.2.<p>Apparently the reason for this is GCC&#x27;s move to GPL v3. So FreeBSD was forced to remain using GCC 4.2.1, GPL v2.<p>As far as Clang goes, is FreeBSD tracking&#x2F;upgrading to newer Clang versions? I assume the answer is yes but I don&#x27;t know.

Can anybody explain the hate&#x2F;aversion towards GCC? As I see it clang used to generae more meaningful error messages thats why many people turned toward clang. But it seems those days are gone.<p>Gcc still produces better=faster machine code. So why the hate? Are there political reasons involved?

Could someone explain the particular pain points of GPLv3 as it relates to use of gcc?

FreeBSD has removed GCC from base system but GCC is still available as a port

What about binutils? Is it removed too?

Well from my understanding FreeBSD was using an old version of GCC mainly because licensing reasons. What&#x27;s so annoying about the licensing around GCC is I see a lot cases where the code generation is still better than clang. Although clang matches GCC in most cases.

I guess we shouldn&#x27;t be surprised. BSD has no philosophical reason to keep GCC over Clang, and if Clang is delivering better performance for them, obviously they&#x27;re gonna use it.

In the future, gcc will be remembered (fondly!) as historically significant between the time periods of simple unix-based K&amp;R C compilers of many years ago -- and Clang, of the past few recent years...