Edison Design Group

The Edison Design Group has made its long-standing, proprietary C++ compiler front-end publicly available, ending decades in which it was licensed only to commercial tool vendors. The move matters to compiler and tooling developers, since the EDG front-end has long been known for its high standards conformance and its use inside products from major compiler and IDE makers. Developers online are discussing what the opening means for research, tooling and competing projects.

Edison Design Group has released the source code of its widely used C/C++ compiler frontend, long kept proprietary and licensed to major compiler vendors. The C++ Alliance is taking over further development of the code, making one of the industry's most respected parser implementations available to the broader community for the first time.

Edison Design Group, the long-standing independent compiler front-end vendor, has announced that its C++ front-end is going public, with details posted on a new site describing the transition. The EDG front-end has been licensed for decades by major compiler and tooling vendors but was never directly available to the wider community. Developers are discussing what the change could mean for C++ tooling and open-source compilers.