To be fair, gcc, g++ and gobjc combined are actually bigger than clang+llvm.
At least on my system. So it could have been worse.

2011/2/3 David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com>

> On Wednesday, February 2, 2011, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
> wrote:
> >> It is a C/C++/Obj-C compiler & does static analysis, has
> >> backends for multiple processor types as well as C as a
> >> target, a lot of optimization tricks etc.  See llvm.org.  But
> >> frankly, I think they have lost the plot. C is basically a
> >> portable assembly programming language & in my highly biased
> >> opinion a C compiler should do no more than peephole
> >> optimizations.  If you want more, might as well use a high
> >> level language.
> >
> > preach it, brother.  i couldn't agree more.
> >
> > - erik
> >
> >
> Well LLVM uses its internal ASTs for a lot of the optimizations doesnt
> it?  My understanding is LLVM is a stack of software that you compose
> other programming language tools by including the libraries you want.
> One might be able to remove the optimizing behaviors one doesn't want
> pretty easily, or write one's own optimizing layer that's stripped
> down.  Then one could have the "do what I said" compiler instead of
> the "do what you think I meant" one.
>
> I believe there are occasions for each type of compiler really.
>
> It might seem really big and bloated but I still think what they've
> done is kind of neat.  Making a real compiler in Haskell or O'Caml is
> pretty damned easy with LLVM bindings.
>
> I wonder how difficult it is to target Plan 9 with LLVM.
>
>