GCC begins move to C++

GCC begins move to C++
[Development] Posted May 31, 2010 13:53 UTC (Mon) by corbet

It's now official: the GCC compiler is moving to a C++ implementation. "I am pleased to report that the GCC Steering Committee and the FSF have approved the use of C++ in GCC itself. Of course, there's no reason for us to use C++ features just because we can. The goal is a better compiler for users, not a C++ code base for its own sake." The next step is the bashing out of a set of C++ coding standards limiting the set of C++ language features which can be used.

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Why is this a bad thing? They're not rewriting it.

As far as I can tell from the mailing list they're planning to allow only a small subset of C++ into the code.

For example, I think it goes without question that at this point we are limiting ourselves to C++98 (plus "long long" so that we have a 64-bit integer type); C++0x features should not be used.  Using multiple inheritance, templates (other than when using the C++ standard library, e.g. std::list<X>), or exceptions also seems overly aggressive to me.

Doesn't LLVM already use C++ and all of it's associated ass-rape like templates?