Re: The build system

[David Grundberg]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso skrev:
> I've always balked at autotools and have never managed to understand
> it, despite a few half-hearted attempts. Today as I was using it to
> develop on Octave I noticed that if I touched src/load-path.cc a
> *massive* recompilation would take place. <snip>

I ran touch src/load-path.cc && make.  It compiled load-path.cc and
linked (no compilation) a lot of DLD-FUNCTIONS.

> I wish we could use something else to build Octave, but I'm not sure
> anything else can also handle the chore of compiling Octave. I know
> autotools solves a problem that no other build system solves, namely,
> maximum *nix portability. So before I go on another wild goose chase,
> why does this happen? Is there a way to speed up development and avoid
> large recompilations when touching just one source file?
> 

Linking cascades.  I don't see how anything is wrong with autotools or
how switching to another build system would fix that kind of problem.

You could try ccache, but since most time is spent linking, you won't
see any speedups.  ccache is useful if you want to run 'make clean'.

Grundberg