in that case I suggest keeping general files (as in not apps, except for stuff like a steam library) on a separate drive or partition from root, that's more or less what I was doing when I was distro hopping
I believe both clang and gcc are present on my system right now. and yeah, the Kate documentation was a little lacking. they do have little pop-ups letting you know though
minor bug, I'll delete the other one in a second.