Re: parallelized configure

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday 14 January 2014 19:20:56 Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jan 2014, Alexander Holler wrote:
> > I just was curious if there was some progress on that topic besides what
> > Ralf Wildenhues seemed to have tried out.
> 
> The most challenging aspect is because configure scripts have a huge
> amount of dependencies (e.g. shell variable definitions) which only
> work due to the sequential nature of the script.  In order to
> parallize configure, one would need to somehow assure that results are
> available in the correct order.  Such logic is normal in make files
> but not in shell scripts.
> 
> Part of configure scripts is written by the developers of a package
> and not from Autoconf and Autoconf has no way to predict the behavior
> of code which is outside of its control.

there's semi-precedence though with introducing new macros when there's no 
confidence in safely converting existing one.  consider:
        AC_CHECK_FUNC beget
        AC_CHECK_FUNCs beget
        AC_CHECK_FUNCS_ONCE
same for HEADERS and DECLS.  maybe time to beget a 
AC_CHECK_FUNCS_ONCE_PARALLEL ? :)  or maybe enshrine the ONCE behavior and 
call it AC_CHECK_FUNCS_PARA.  that'd cover a decent amount of ground (albeit, 
not as much as would truly be possible from an interlocked pipeline) without 
too much pain.
-mike

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