D - C++ Build times
- Pride of Higara (20/20) Feb 28 2004 One of the primary limitations of code development and
- Ant (7/9) Feb 28 2004 gtkmm - the C++ binding to GTK - takes something like
- Walter (6/6) Feb 28 2004 I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did...
- J Anderson (5/12) Feb 29 2004 Coming from the man who developed a quicker compiler, was it a good
- Walter (5/17) Feb 29 2004 me
- Jeroen van Bemmel (12/18) Feb 29 2004 Total build time not only depends on the compiler, but also on the build
- Ant (5/13) Feb 29 2004 how significante is that?
- Jeroen van Bemmel (5/6) Feb 29 2004 I did a quick test: parallel='true' builds in 46 seconds, parallel='fals...
- Sean Kelly (15/19) Feb 29 2004 In companies the reasons are often political and to some degree
- Walter (8/26) Feb 29 2004 did,
- John Reimer (1/7) Feb 29 2004 If it's any consolation, you'll always have a fan club here. :-)
- Walter (5/12) Feb 29 2004 for
One of the primary limitations of code development and productivity is software build time. Building a complex piece of software such as Microsoft Windows can take hours or all night. C++ compiling is rather slow. If something takes several hours to build it is less usable and limits the ability to test complex builds. The D language and its compiled libraries could be benchmarked with C++ on very large code builds. If something takes several hours on C++ with all the library dependancies then it should be much faster with D. In a recent acm article "Game Development: Harder Than You Think" about game design and complexity the author lists software build time as a limitation. Complex games written is Visual C++ can take half an hour or more to compile and build. The author stated of the article stated, "In general, C++ seems to encourage long build times. Once the build time has grown too long, a team may end up putting a significant amount of work into refactoring their source code to make it build more quickly." Here is the link. http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=114&page=3 Build time and link time should be an important part of software design. They even list making build executable on parelell hardware.
Feb 28 2004
Ant <Ant_member pathlink.com> In article <c1rpjo$46v$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Pride of Higara says...One of the primary limitations of code development and productivity is software build time.gtkmm - the C++ binding to GTK - takes something like 30 minutes to build DUI - the D binding to GTK - takes 3 seconds to build plus the linking time. granted gtkmm has about 90k lines and DUI only 52954 lines. Ant
Feb 28 2004
I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did, they'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder telling me that build times were the overriding consideration in selecting a compiler, yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market. Check out this comparison of wxWindows build speeds: http://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/wx/wxhatch/wxMSW_Compiler_choice.html
Feb 28 2004
Walter wrote:I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did, they'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder telling me that build times were the overriding consideration in selecting a compiler, yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market. Check out this comparison of wxWindows build speeds: http://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/wx/wxhatch/wxMSW_Compiler_choice.htmlComing from the man who developed a quicker compiler, was it a good investment to make the compiler quicker? -- -Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
Feb 29 2004
"J Anderson" <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> wrote in message news:c1s6k9$s5n$1 digitaldaemon.com...Walter wrote:meI'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did, they'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder tellingcompiler,that build times were the overriding consideration in selecting a*I* care about fast build times <g>. It makes me a lot more productive.yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market. Check out this comparison of wxWindows build speeds: http://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/wx/wxhatch/wxMSW_Compiler_choice.htmlComing from the man who developed a quicker compiler, was it a good investment to make the compiler quicker?
Feb 29 2004
Total build time not only depends on the compiler, but also on the build environment used. The common GCC/make combination on most flavours of unix for example can be slow because a new GCC process is started for each .c file (and new shells for each submake, etc). I personally use Ant to build CPP sources, and use the GCC feature that allows you to send the source file names of _all_ files you need to compile all at once on the command line. This gives some significant time savings (in my case at least). Don't know how Visual Studio handles this though "Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:c1rvf0$g9v$1 digitaldaemon.com...I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did, they'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder tellingmethat build times were the overriding consideration in selecting acompiler,yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market. Check out this comparison of wxWindows build speeds: http://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/wx/wxhatch/wxMSW_Compiler_choice.html
Feb 29 2004
In article <c1s8fg$11mt$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Jeroen van Bemmel says...Total build time not only depends on the compiler, but also on the build environment used. The common GCC/make combination on most flavours of unix for example can be slow because a new GCC process is started for each .c file (and new shells for each submake, etc).shhh. don't tell anyone, dmd looks much better if noone notice that.I personally use Ant to build CPP sources, and use the GCC feature that allows you to send the source file names of _all_ files you need to compile all at once on the command line. This gives some significant time savings (in my case at least). Don't know how Visual Studio handles this thoughhow significante is that? on my example (gtkmm / DUI) it's on the order of the hundreads. Ant
Feb 29 2004
how significante is that?I did a quick test: parallel='true' builds in 46 seconds, parallel='false' in 48-49. So that's about 5% pure for passing all files on the commandline (true), not too shocking but still usable. The difference with a make-based build environment is more significant though; unfortunately, I threw away the make scripts long ago...
Feb 29 2004
Walter wrote:I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if they did, they'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder telling me that build times were the overriding consideration in selecting a compiler, yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market.In companies the reasons are often political and to some degree economic. The place I currently work is a pretty big MS supporter and the build team would tell me to climb a tree if I asked to use a C++ compiler other than Visual Studio. They would have to purchase it, learn it, write build scripts for it, and support it separately from the standard farm of VS boxes. But then they also told me to climb a tree when I tried to convince them to let me use Boost, because it offered them no place to pass the buck :) Guess what I'm saying is that compiler features alone don't always have a lot to do with why one is chosen over the other. And while build speed can be quite important for large projects but there are other issues too... standards conformance, clarity of error reporting, library support (why Visual Studio beat out Borland), etc. Sean
Feb 29 2004
"Sean Kelly" <sean ffwd.cx> wrote in message news:c1tag4$2qsq$1 digitaldaemon.com...Walter wrote:did,I'm skeptical that most programmers care about build times - if theymethey'd switch to DMC++ which is way faster. I remember one coder tellingcompiler,that build times were the overriding consideration in selecting aI agree that other considerations are also important. There are people for whom the brand name on the box is the only consideration. I just need to do a better job with branding <g>.yet he was using far and away the slowest compiler on the market.In companies the reasons are often political and to some degree economic. The place I currently work is a pretty big MS supporter and the build team would tell me to climb a tree if I asked to use a C++ compiler other than Visual Studio. They would have to purchase it, learn it, write build scripts for it, and support it separately from the standard farm of VS boxes. But then they also told me to climb a tree when I tried to convince them to let me use Boost, because it offered them no place to pass the buck :) Guess what I'm saying is that compiler features alone don't always have a lot to do with why one is chosen over the other. And while build speed can be quite important for large projects but there are other issues too... standards conformance, clarity of error reporting, library support (why Visual Studio beat out Borland), etc.
Feb 29 2004
I agree that other considerations are also important. There are people for whom the brand name on the box is the only consideration. I just need to do a better job with branding <g>.If it's any consolation, you'll always have a fan club here. :-)
Feb 29 2004
"John Reimer" <jjreimer telus.net> wrote in message news:c1tlqu$c5a$1 digitaldaemon.com...forI agree that other considerations are also important. There are peopledowhom the brand name on the box is the only consideration. I just need toAnd I do appreciate that!a better job with branding <g>.If it's any consolation, you'll always have a fan club here. :-)
Feb 29 2004