How Compiler Explorer Works in 2025

https://xania.org/202506/how-compiler-explorer-works

101•vitaut•4d ago

Comments

unconed•5h ago

Putting AI disclaimers at the end of your post seems like the wrong way to do it. If you feel the need to put a disclaimer, put it at the top. Otherwise, what's the point?

YetAnotherNick•5h ago

AI disclaimer is both in the top and bottom. First box contains:

> Written with LLM assistance. Details at end.

unconed•5h ago

Yep I totally didn't notice it because it's off to the side and looks like some kind of promo box.

arkj•5h ago

Will anything be ever written in future without a little help from llm?

quaintdev•5h ago

Is it just me or something is wrong with HN https://ibb.co/0RwqjZvP

arkj•5h ago

An interesting glitch. A few more refreshes and got the site unavailable message. It’s fixed now.

arkj•5h ago

Maybe it’s a client side error but I see three links of this post on the homepage.

psnehanshu•5h ago

The tool is called Compiler Explorer, but is hosted at godbolt.org. There's also compliler-explorer.com, which is the same thing. Why not retire the first domain? Just redirect to the namesake domain to prevent link rot.

krackers•5h ago

Because most people colloquially know it as "Godbolt".

MeetingsBrowser•4h ago

Most people I know, including myself, refer to it as godbolt and not compiler explorer.

I didn’t know it was hosted anywhere other than godbolt.org

0xTJ•3h ago

When I want to visit Compiler Explorer, I start typing godbolt, then his Enter when the browser brings up the correct item from my History. "compiler-explorer.com" is also much longer (if you want to type out the whole things).

jevndev•3h ago

Funny enough, he has talked about this exact problem on his podcast “Two’s complement”; Specifically the episode “The future of compiler explorer”. Commenters below are correct that it’s just about how heavily associated his name is with the tool. I just figured I’d also drop this source here because he has a lot of interesting things to say about his involvement with the project

wild_pointer•3h ago

How about compiling client-side with wasm, fully or partially? Feasible? Was it considered?

petabyt•3h ago

Some of the compilers they use (msvc) are not open source and are not allowed to run in wasm. And porting entire compiler toolchains to wasm would be a gargantuan task.

jenadine•3h ago

That would imply compiling each compiler to wasm, which might not be supported. Plus challenges like making a virtual file system to get the header files and other files needed for the compilation.

Edit: also, you couldn't execute the resulting binary

galkk•3h ago

tl;dr:

    * Right now, Compiler Explorer costs around $3000 a month (including AWS, monitoring, Sentry for errors, Grafana, and other expenses). 
    * nsjail for security/isolation
    * 3.9 terabytes of compilers, libraries, and tools
    * Up to 30+ EC2 instances (EC2 instances are virtual machines)
    * 4,724 compiler versions
    * 1,982,662 short links saved (and as of recently, ~14k ex-goo.gl links)
    * 1.8 million compilations per week

If my napkin math is correct, it's around 3 compilations/sec. and their cost is 0.0004 cents per compilation. Fascinating. If anyone asked me about ballpark estimate of compiler explorer cost, I'd be wrong at least at magnitude. Like - they must be heavy cpu/io/network bound, and this is like the worst scenario for cloud use.

This and lichess (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41922928#41928953) shows that you really can handle very serious loads for quite cheap.

dieortin•3h ago

> $3,00015

That’s a very weird place to put a comma. I have no idea what number this is representing (since I doubt it’s $3 a month)

detaro•2h ago

the 15 is a copy-paste error (footnote)

sapiogram•2h ago

Thank you, the comment has value now.

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Comments

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