clang-15: Too many clang dependencies

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

On Yosemite at least, clang-15 depends on llvm-15 and clang-13, which depends on llvm-13 and clang-11, which depends on llvm-11 and clang-9.0, which depends on llvm-9.0. That's too many compilers to ask a user to install (or, worse, compile) just to install one port that requires clang-15 (rust, in this case).

[cjones051073 (Chris Jones)]

I am afraid but this bootstrapping on older systems is inevitable. clang 15 cannot be built with clang 11, its too old, which is why clang 13 is used. clang 13 in turn needs clang 11 to be built. I see no obvious way out of this.

[cjones051073 (Chris Jones)]

Just to add, the depending on clang 13 from clang 15 (should be) a build dep only. So it is not correct that a user installing the clang 15 binary tarballs needs to install clang 13 as well. Only users building from source would need this, so the majority of users, which I presume will be using the binary tarballs, will not have to install clang-13 at all.

[kencu (Ken)]

clang11-bootstrap was supposed to be a partial solution to all these deps, building with minimal deps and then bootstrapping the new toolchain from a newer base.

I don’t know if it can build clang-14… maybe… but should build clang-13 without trouble.

[cjones051073 (Chris Jones)]

Closing this, as the current behaviour is intentional and for the majority of users is invisible as its only a build dep.