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From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Continued discussion of Ada compiler response query.
Keywords: Response time, VAX, Reuse
Message-ID: <8587@fy.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 14 Sep 90 12:15:36 GMT
References: <1732@dinl.mmc.UUCP>
Reply-To: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1732@dinl.mmc.UUCP> schallen@dinl.uucp (Eric Schallenmueller) writes:
>
>One of the things that many of you asked is:  why are you recompiling the world
>every time you do a build?  Part of the reason is that the core of the system
>that they are having the most troubles with is used by EVERYONE, and so a 
>single change to the core (kernel??) causes a massive recompile.  Although this
>is probably a poor design/implementation, it can't really be changed at this 
>point in the ballgame.

Eric, let me urge you most strongly to rethink this position.  You seem
to be trying to fix a symptom - the long overnight rebuilds - rather
than the cause - a software structure where a core module is too
visible and too volatile.

This is probably a result of poor design - somebody didn't do the right
partitioning, layering, abstraction, information hiding or whatever.
The grief you are experiencing is telling you, very plainly, that the
design is broken.

Under those circumstances, experience surely teaches us this: the design
won't work; you won't be able to finish a quality product; and even if
you do ship something, it will be unmaintainable.  The ONLY answer is to
go back and do it right.  Moreover, if you have to backtrack, the sooner
you do it - the earlier in the life cycle and development path you take
the hit - the cheaper it will be and the better the result will be.

The choice to stick with this design is not open to you.  As I see it,
your only choices are redesign or failure.  Please take a hard look
at this advice; it is based on a lot of my own mistakes that I would
not want others to repeat.