The compiler that claude made went way beyond workable. It could compile the full linux kernel afaik. That is much further even beyond standard C.
The compiler that claude made went way beyond workable. It could compile the full linux kernel afaik. That is much further even beyond standard C.
People who independently tried to use it reported that it is very much not workable:
- "CCC compiled every single C source file in the Linux 6.9 kernel without a single compiler error (0 errors, 96 warnings). This is genuinely impressive for a compiler built entirely by an AI. However, the build failed at the linker stage with ~40,784 undefined reference errors."(https://github.com/harshavmb/compare-claude-compiler)
- Overall it’s an interesting experiment, and shows the current bleeding edge of Claude’s Opus 4.6 model. However the resulting product is also a clear example of the throwaway nature of projects generated almost entirely by AI code agents with little human oversight. The prototype is really impressive, but there is no real path forward for it to be further developed. It can build the Linux kernel [for RISC-V], which is impressive. It can also build other things… if you are lucky, but you really cannot rely on it to work. (https://voxelmanip.se/2026/02/06/trying-out-claudes-c-compil...)
Anthropic themselves said that the codebase was effectively bricked and that their agents could not salvage it.
Well then as you say a 10-50KLOC C compiler is workable. Could you show me the C compiler that does manage to compile a modern Linux kernel that is of that size?
TCC did several years ago. It could boot Linux from source in under 10 seconds. It's wasn't that big of a C compiler. It's in the 50,000 lines of code range.
This was 20 years ago from what I can find. Beside that Linux now is a vastly different codebase than it was 20 years ago. That effort also did not compile Linux unmodified, it required several changes: https://bellard.org/tcc/tccboot_readme.html.