ajensen (@.) on 6/24/10 wrote:
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>I think the real problem with GCC is GCC. It is said to be the ugliest hack out
>there and at the same time one of the most important hacks.

It's by far not a hack. It's just a very old and large codebase.

>I think open source
>community would be wise to make a shift to LLVM/CLANG. Not because it is better,
>but because it can be made better.

Unlikely to happen for both practical (try compiling a Linux kernel with LLVM) and political reasons (while LLVM license should be compatible with GPL it isn't GPL).

> GCC is unmaintainable, or so I have heard pretty much everywhere I read on this web.

GCC is hard to maintain but as far as the code base goes there has been a lot of improvements in the versions starting from 4.0 and more areas are still in the process of being cleaned up. However it's a long job and not very rewarding. That said when LLVM will reach the level of support for both languages and architectures that GCC has it is very likely that it will be just as hard to maintain.