Hi,

As of #490494, chrome/win builds now use clang as compiler by default. We hope to ship M62 in this configuration.

In general, the compiler switch should be mostly transparent for developers. You will now use clang locally if you build on Windows. You should still be able to use the Visual Studio IDE for debugging, you should still be able to use ETW.

Compiles are a bit slower than with Visual Studio’s compiler if you do local builds. On the other hand, they work better with distributed build systems. If you work for Google and don’t yet use goma, you might want to give it a try (https://go/ma for setup instructions). It’s a bit easier to use if you use Bruce’s autoninja (already in depot_tools and your %PATH%). See https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/lkcr/docs/windows_build_instructions.md#Faster-builds for more options for getting faster builds.

We will keep the Visual Studio build working for a release or two in case we need to switch back. All the “clang” bots now do Visual Studio builds to make sure the Visual Studio build does not bitrot, while the regular bots now do clang builds.

If you run into any problems, please file a bug and cc hans@ and thakis@. You can set is_clang = false to switch back to Visual Studio for now if something’s really not working for you, but only do this after filing a bug.

Nico,

on behalf of the clang/win crew (rnk@ hans@ inglorion@ thakis@)

p.s.: The linker is still link.exe, we’re only changing the compiler at this point.