How to set Clang platform?

[yh-sb]

There is clang option in --toolchain, but how to set clang platform? There is no clang in platforms option.
If I just set xmake f --toolchain=clang the project with boost package fails to build.

[waruqi]

no clang platform, you just set --toolchain=clang, but if you are using windows platform and installing package, you can only use msvc, do not switch toolchain, it does not support.

[yh-sb]

So, on Windows xrepo supports only MSVC?
Does this mean that I can't use Clang at all on Windows if my project uses some packages?

[waruqi]

Yes, switching toolchains on windows is too costly to maintain the package, and I don't have the time or more server resources to support it. It requires a lot of things to be considered, binary precompilation support, different compilers, runtime/mode/shared/static permutations for ci testing.

It will also cause to more complex configuration scripts for packages that are not easy to maintain

[Extra-Creativity]

I install clang by Visual Studio, which can use xmake packages normally (not clang-cl, but clang++).

[Extra-Creativity]

It seems that you cannot use clang on windows without gcc/msvc as stated in stackoverflow

[waruqi]

I install clang by Visual Studio, which can use xmake packages normally (not clang-cl, but clang++).

There are only a few packages maintained by xmake.lua, and some headeronly packages that support clang, but I don't maintain them on purpose. Also, there is no ci to test these packages. They are unreliable, and if they can be installed successfully, you can use them, but I don't maintain them for clang.

[Extra-Creativity]

I mean, you can still use vs runtime, just change the toolchain

[waruqi]

We're only talking about toolchain switching for packages.

All package build scripts on windows are maintained only for msvc, there has never been any support or testing for clang.

[waruqi]

If you switch to clang, some package build scripts may or may not compile and pass, without any ci testing to guarantee it.

[Extra-Creativity]

Get it; I fail to install boost too :).

[waruqi]

Because boost's package configuration script never supported clang on windows, only for msvc.

[Extra-Creativity]

It seems that conan cannot cooperate happily with clang on windows for boost either, see conan-io/conan-center-index#11970.