Re: Contribution to egcs

[Robert Lipe <robertlipe at usa dot net>]

> I am interested in beoming a contributor to the egcs project. My

A trip to http://egcs.cygnus.com (specifically "/contribute.html") is 
in order.

> primary interest is in improving compile times and link times for
> debugging builds of large C++ apps (e.g. > 4MB executatable when striped)  
> My current app swells from 5 MB to 130MB for debug and takes forever to
> link on a machine with 256MB of RAM.  Compile times for non-optimized
> builds is also unaceptable for my purposes.

Sounds like a pretty traditional performance problem.  Profile it, see
where the time is going, and make it spend less time there.  If, for
example, you see that it's spending 90% of its time doing disk I/O then
optimizing the register reload allocator isn't the best plan ever.

> My first step would be to try and understand what is happening now and
> learn about the existing designs and the build process. I am working with

Personally, I'd start by profiling it.   Watch the % of times you're
spending in user and system mode.   Go from there.

> the gcc for BeOSx86 -- should I get the distrbution directly from them Be, 
> Inc?

BeOS isn't heavily represented in this group so you may or may not be up
against a Be-specific issue.

> What mailing-list should I use for general discussion of the above issues
> and what might be done about them? Who (or what list) should I contact for
> questions regarding configuration/make to build gcc?

http://egcs.cygnus.com/lists.html

I remember back int he old days when we had to TYPE answers to questions
instead of cutting and pasting URLs. :-)

RJL