======================================= Clang 7.0.0 (In-Progress) Release Notes ======================================= .. contents:: :local: :depth: 2 Written by the `LLVM Team `_ .. warning:: These are in-progress notes for the upcoming Clang 7 release. Release notes for previous releases can be found on `the Download Page `_. Introduction ============ This document contains the release notes for the Clang C/C++/Objective-C frontend, part of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, release 7.0.0. Here we describe the status of Clang in some detail, including major improvements from the previous release and new feature work. For the general LLVM release notes, see `the LLVM documentation `_. All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the `LLVM releases web site `_. For more information about Clang or LLVM, including information about the latest release, please see the `Clang Web Site `_ or the `LLVM Web Site `_. Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the main Clang web page, this document applies to the *next* release, not the current one. To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the `releases page `_. What's New in Clang 7.0.0? ========================== Some of the major new features and improvements to Clang are listed here. Generic improvements to Clang as a whole or to its underlying infrastructure are described first, followed by language-specific sections with improvements to Clang's support for those languages. Major New Features ------------------ - ... Improvements to Clang's diagnostics ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - ``-Wc++98-compat-extra-semi`` is a new flag, which was previously inseparable from ``-Wc++98-compat-pedantic``. The latter still controls the new flag. - ``-Wextra-semi`` now also controls ``-Wc++98-compat-extra-semi``. Please do note that if you pass ``-Wno-c++98-compat-pedantic``, it implies ``-Wno-c++98-compat-extra-semi``, so if you want that diagnostic, you need to explicitly re-enable it (e.g. by appending ``-Wextra-semi``). - ``-Wself-assign`` and ``-Wself-assign-field`` were extended to diagnose self-assignment operations using overloaded operators (i.e. classes). If you are doing such an assignment intentionally, e.g. in a unit test for a data structure, the first warning can be disabled by passing ``-Wno-self-assign-overloaded``, also the warning can be suppressed by adding ``*&`` to the right-hand side or casting it to the appropriate reference type. Non-comprehensive list of changes in this release ------------------------------------------------- - Clang binary and libraries have been renamed from 7.0 to 7. For example, the ``clang`` binary will be called ``clang-7`` instead of ``clang-7.0``. - Clang implements a collection of recent fixes to the C++ standard's definition of "standard-layout". In particular, a class is only considered to be standard-layout if all base classes and the first data member (or bit-field) can be laid out at offset zero. - Clang's handling of the GCC ``packed`` class attribute in C++ has been fixed to apply only to non-static data members and not to base classes. This fixes an ABI difference between Clang and GCC, but creates an ABI difference between Clang 7 and earlier versions. The old behavior can be restored by setting ``-fclang-abi-compat`` to ``6`` or earlier. - Clang implements the proposed resolution of LWG issue 2358, along with the `corresponding change to the Itanium C++ ABI `_, which make classes containing only unnamed non-zero-length bit-fields be considered non-empty. This is an ABI break compared to prior Clang releases, but makes Clang generate code that is ABI-compatible with other compilers. The old behavior can be restored by setting ``-fclang-abi-compat`` to ``6`` or lower. - An existing tool named ``diagtool`` has been added to the release. As the name suggests, it helps with dealing with diagnostics in ``clang``, such as finding out the warning hierarchy, and which of them are enabled by default or for a particular compiler invocation. - ... New Compiler Flags ------------------ - ``-fstrict-float-cast-overflow`` and ``-fno-strict-float-cast-overflow``. When a floating-point value is not representable in a destination integer type, the code has undefined behavior according to the language standard. By default, Clang will not guarantee any particular result in that case. With the 'no-strict' option, Clang attempts to match the overflowing behavior of the target's native float-to-int conversion instructions. - ``-fforce-emit-vtables`` and ``-fno-force-emit-vtables``. In order to improve devirtualization, forces emitting of vtables even in modules where it isn't necessary. It causes more inline virtual functions to be emitted. - ... Deprecated Compiler Flags ------------------------- The following options are deprecated and ignored. They will be removed in future versions of Clang. - ... Modified Compiler Flags ----------------------- - Before Clang 7, we prepended the `#` character to the `--autocomplete` argument to enable cc1 flags. For example, when the `-cc1` or `-Xclang` flag is in the :program:`clang` invocation, the shell executed `clang --autocomplete=#-`. Clang 7 now requires the whole invocation including all flags to be passed to the `--autocomplete` like this: `clang --autocomplete=-cc1,-xc++,-fsyn`. New Pragmas in Clang -------------------- Clang now supports the ... Attribute Changes in Clang -------------------------- - Clang now supports function multiversioning with attribute 'target' on ELF based x86/x86-64 environments by using indirect functions. This implementation has a few minor limitations over the GCC implementation for the sake of AST sanity, however it is otherwise compatible with existing code using this feature for GCC. Consult the documentation for the target attribute for more information. - ... Windows Support --------------- Clang's support for building native Windows programs ... C Language Changes in Clang --------------------------- - ... ... C11 Feature Support ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ... C++ Language Changes in Clang ----------------------------- - ... C++1z Feature Support ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ... Objective-C Language Changes in Clang ------------------------------------- ... OpenCL C Language Changes in Clang ---------------------------------- ... OpenMP Support in Clang ---------------------------------- - ... CUDA Support in Clang --------------------- - Clang will now try to locate the CUDA installation next to :program:`ptxas` in the `PATH` environment variable. This behavior can be turned off by passing the new flag `--cuda-path-ignore-env`. - Clang now supports generating object files with relocatable device code. This feature needs to be enabled with `-fcuda-rdc` and my result in performance penalties compared to whole program compilation. Please note that NVIDIA's :program:`nvcc` must be used for linking. Internal API Changes -------------------- These are major API changes that have happened since the 6.0.0 release of Clang. If upgrading an external codebase that uses Clang as a library, this section should help get you past the largest hurdles of upgrading. - ... AST Matchers ------------ - ... clang-format ------------ - Clang-format will now support detecting and formatting code snippets in raw string literals. This is configured through the `RawStringFormats` style option. - ... libclang -------- ... Static Analyzer --------------- - ... ... Undefined Behavior Sanitizer (UBSan) ------------------------------------ * ... Core Analysis Improvements ========================== - ... New Issues Found ================ - ... Python Binding Changes ---------------------- The following methods have been added: - ... Significant Known Problems ========================== Additional Information ====================== A wide variety of additional information is available on the `Clang web page `_. The web page contains versions of the API documentation which are up-to-date with the Subversion version of the source code. You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going into the "``clang/docs/``" directory in the Clang tree. If you have any questions or comments about Clang, please feel free to contact us via the `mailing list `_.