Alternatives to gcc (was Re: gcc 4.3: when will it become standard compiler?)

FWIW,

I had some informal talk with brooks_at_ about this at EuroBSDCon:

- groff(1) needs a C++ compiler so clang is not (yet) an option  for the time being we will have to live with GCC or llvm-gcc.

Some things we should consider:
- Replacing groff with something less restricted that doesn't require C++: Heirloom-doctools may be an option.
- More extensive testing of gcc-llvm: A USE_GCC= llvm for the ports tree would be nice.
- Remove gcc from the base and make the compilation depend on a packaged C.. somewhat like was made with perl.

binutils is yet another issue: I am hoping this will be updated to the latest GPL2 version while a new alternative is developed. Perhaps a combination of RH elfutils and our own libelf efforts would make a viable alternative.

just my $0.02,

Pedro.