Strange think about Clang compiler

Why is it that the special Clang linker (lld) does not come with Clang?
It seems bizarre that I have to install and maintain it separately.

After adding the right linker, I still cannot do a profile build:
lld-link: error: could not open 'C:/msys64/mingw64/lib/clang/12.0.0/lib/windows/libclang_rt.profile-x86_64.a': No such file or directory
clang++: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

It seems that if you want to do that, you have to build the compiler yourself from scratch:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29392702/missing-libclang-rt-san-x86-64-a-file-for-llvm-compiler-rt

It also fails to build with a non-profile build (config sanity check fails):
dannc@DESKTOP-426Q3JG MINGW64 /c/users/dannc/chess/stockfish-master/src
$ make build arch=x86-64-avx512 COMP=clang
Default net: nn-7756374aaed3.nnue
Already available.

Config:
debug: 'no'
sanitize: 'no'
optimize: 'yes'
arch: 'x86-64-avx512'
bits: '64'
kernel: 'MINGW64_NT-10.0-19041'
os: 'Windows_NT'
prefetch: 'yes'
popcnt: 'yes'
pext: 'no'
sse: 'yes'
mmx: 'no'
sse2: 'yes'
ssse3: 'yes'
sse41: 'yes'
avx2: 'no'
avx512: 'no'
vnni256: 'no'
vnni512: 'no'
neon: 'no'

Flags:
CXX: clang++
CXXFLAGS: -Wall -Wcast-qual -fno-exceptions -std=c++17 -pedantic -Wextra -Wshadow -m64 -DUSE_PTHREADS -DNDEBUG -O3 -mtune=native -fexperimental-new-pass-manager -DIS_64BIT -msse -msse3 -mpopcnt -DUSE_POPCNT -DUSE_SSE41 -msse4.1 -DUSE_SSSE3 -mssse3 -DUSE_SSE2 -msse2 -flto -fuse-ld=lld
LDFLAGS: -latomic -m64 -lpthread -Wall -Wcast-qual -fno-exceptions -std=c++17 -pedantic -Wextra -Wshadow -m64 -DUSE_PTHREADS -DNDEBUG -O3 -mtune=native -fexperimental-new-pass-manager -DIS_64BIT -msse -msse3 -mpopcnt -DUSE_POPCNT -DUSE_SSE41 -msse4.1 -DUSE_SSSE3 -mssse3 -DUSE_SSE2 -msse2 -flto -fuse-ld=lld

Testing config sanity. If this fails, try 'make help' ...

make: *** [Makefile:841: config-sanity] Error 1

From this I conclude that they do not test at all with clang on Windows using msys2

Do you get better compiled code from CLang than from other C compilers?

TheSelfImprover wrote:

Do you get better compiled code from CLang than from other C compilers?

Back when it used to work, the answer was "sometimes" (depending on what engine I was building and other factors).
The thing I liked most about clang was the compiler diagnostics, which are better than gcc (or at least they were, not sure today).
However, I have not been able to build Stockfish with Clang for two or three years now.
I quit trying for about 6 months, but today I got an update to Clang to version 12:
$ clang --version
clang version 12.0.0
Target: x86_64-w64-windows-gnu
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: C:/msys64/mingw64/bin

So I thought I would give it another try. My guess is that it works great on Linux and it might work on Windows if we had a workable configuration in the makefile.
But the makefile that comes with SF simply does not work with clang on Windows using msys2 (at least on my system).

TheSelfImprover wrote:

Do you get better compiled code from CLang than from other C compilers?

I noticed very significant improvements of using Clang over GCC when also compiling with -flto (quick unscientific test, running both versions at the same time: clang + LTO -> 1820 knps, gcc + LTO -> 1560 knps). Though the reason for this big difference could be that I am writing the code in Nim and then the Nim compiler translates this into weird, human-untypical C code.

j.t. wrote:

...I am writing the code in Nim and then the Nim compiler translates this into weird, human-untypical C code.

Arrggghhhhh - there are too many languages!!!  

I hadn't heard of Nim: it's good that it transpiles into other languages like C and JavaScript - but I suspect that more and more transpilers are being written for other languages anyway.