This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: GCC 3.3 compile speed regression - AN ANSWER
In article <3E483557.8049885F@OARcorp.com> you write:
>
>
>Steven Bosscher wrote:
>>
>> Op ma 10-02-2003, om 21:54 schreef Phil Edwards:
>> > On Monday 10 February 2003 01:58 pm, Steven Bosscher wrote:
>> > > > Op ma 10-02-2003, om 20:47 schreef Mike Stump:
>> > > > > On Monday, February 10, 2003, at 06:31 AM, Michael S. Zick wrote:
>> > > > > > Who is complaining? If we can define the group for which this is a
>> > > > > > concern, then perhaps we can define a way to satisfy that group.
>> > > > >
>> > > > > Apple is complaining on behalf of our users.
>> > > >
>> > > > The thread on linux-kernel was also quite clear. Some people even
>> > > > discussing a fork.
>> >
>> > For speeding up compilation times? What changes would they make in such
>> > a fork that couldn't be made in the mainline compiler?
>>
>> I don't know, but if it had made sense I would probably have
>> remembered. But they discussed just about every free and nonfree C
>> compiler and how it could/would/should help them get a kernel compiled
>> faster.
>> (Somebody complained that it took him 20 minutes to compile a kernel,
>> that was unacceptable to him :-)
>
>Something deep inside me can't resist saying "buy a faster machine" or
>"think more, compile less". Full sarcasm mode on.
>Seriously, when compile times were uniformly slow, batch, or overnight
>we old timers put a lot more thought into fixing problems on paper.
>These young whipper snappers just want to let the computer do
>everything.
It will probably make a lot more sense if I post numbers for you.
On my PIII 1.2GHz box, building an OpenBSD kernel takes 5 minutes.
the basic source distribution takes about 1 hour, XFree roughly 40 minutes.
The whole ports tree takes about one day.
About half of it is spent in qt3, and kde.
kdelibs and kdebase each take over an hour to build.
We are talking gcc 2.95.3.
On the amiga next to it (68040@40MHz), building a generic kernel takes
3 hours. The basic source distribution takes slightly less than two days.
I don't even a good idea what the time would be for the ports tree, but
you can figure it out.
The Sun3 that Miod Vallat uses has a 68030 (I think) and it takes slightly
over one week to build the whole source distribution.
Now, you have to double these numbers for gcc 3.2, and it's even worse for
more recent versions.
Basically, recent gcc kill old boxen. Maybe you feel those should be dead.
Some people disagree. And cross-compiling does not really solve the problem:
building stuff is still a very good way to exercise a system and shake out
bugs.
Bottom line is, recent gcc are slowly killing linux and unix distributions
on slow hardware, because they force cross-compilation, and cross-compilation
does not find bugs.