EDG's C++ front-end goes open source after 30 years
EDG C++ front-end goes public
On September 30, 2026, EDG's C++ front-end source code becomes public, with The C++ Alliance as its nonprofit home. The same engine and standards continue under a new steward, funded by tax-deductible contributions. Three development tracks—community contributions, ongoing maintenance, and collectively funded features—ensure one codebase for everyone, with no early access. John Spicer chairs the Fiscal Sponsorship Committee overseeing the process.
This is a change of steward, not a change of course.
- jabl
What's not mentioned in the announcement (at least based on a quick skim) is that EDG the company is winding down, which is likely the reason why they're open sourcing the front end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Design_Group ref 9: https://herbsutter.com/2025/11/10/trip-report-november-2025-...
- badsectoracula
I wonder if the source-to-source compilation could be used to transpile C++ code/libraries to other languages - e.g. could this be used (with appropriate modifications of course) to compile FLTK into Free Pascal code and used directly by Lazarus as a backend for LCL? Trying to use C++ libraries from non-C++ is always a PITA, especially if you want to avoid dynamic linking.
Also, since i mentioned Lazarus, if it can compile itself to Free Pascal, i wonder if it'd be useful for adding C++ support to Lazarus itself so that Free Pascal and C/C++ can be mixed in a project to make self-contained executables for desktop applications. It'd most likely need much more work than that just the compilation to make it a first class citizen like Free Pascal itself is for Lazarus/LCL (e.g. things like the object inspector and code tools being able to understand C++ well enough so that refactoring and stuff like doubleclicking on a button in a form automatically declaring and defining the handler and moving the editor cursor to the newly defined handler's code body), but maybe it could be used as a starting point.
- vintagedave
Wow. This is big news for C++.
For background -- and I am not an expert here -- their C++ frontend is widely known. I first heard of it because Visual C++'s Intellisense uses it, which was notable because VC does not use the msvc frontend for its own completion. I understand it's been either used or evaluated for other frontends in the past too. I worked as PM for one C++ product, and was fortunate to be able to learn a lot from our engineers; we didn't use it, but they thought highly of EDG.
It has a very strong reputation for being correct. And as such, I think open sourcing it will be a very beneficial thing for the C++ community.
- trebligdivad
It's got history! That's really unusual for moves to open-source; the dates on the earliest commits are in 1990 and they do go forward in time so that's really unusual to have that much history. I bet there's some fun stuff in there.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo
Announcement: https://edgcpp.org/#transition
The source code itself: https://github.com/edgcpp/compiler
Documentation: https://edgcpp.org/doc/
And for those curious the license SPDX is: Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception
i.e.