other/7233: provide ccache (see freshmeat.net) withing the gcc suite

[danscox at mindspring dot com]

>Number:         7233
>Category:       other
>Synopsis:       provide ccache (see freshmeat.net) withing the gcc suite
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    unassigned
>State:          open
>Class:          support
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jul 08 08:26:01 PDT 2002
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Daniel S. Cox
>Release:        Whenever is convienient
>Organization:
>Environment:
ALL
>Description:
ccache is a seperate program that saves the .o files (and any stderr messages) from gcc -c.  It forms an MD4 hash of the input file contents, the gcc driver size and mtime), and keeps the resultant files in a cache.  On a later run, if an input files MD4 hash matches an extant file in the cache, that file is hard linked (if possible, or copied) instead of compiling again.  This is the classic space versus time trade off, but saves an incredible amount of time during a 'make clean; make' run.  Andrew Tridgel (Tridge of the Samba project) wrote this version.

If gcc were modified to provide this functionality itself, it could do so much more effectively than any external program.  Obviously, the feature would be off by default.

Thank you for your time.
>How-To-Repeat:
see http://ccache.samba.org/ for the external program.
>Fix:

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: