Re: Crosspost: Help wanted from comp.compilers

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

It is important to realize the primary reason that you don't hear as much
griping about 'recompile the world' these days is that it simply doesn't
take very long to do it.

Our original MS-DOS development system was a 10 MHZ 8086 Seattle Computer
with twin 1.2 Meg 8" floppies. (This was twice as fast as the original IBM
PC.) Each compiler pass had its own development floppy, while the compile,
operating system, utilities, and shared libraries fit on the other floppy.
Recompile the world took around 4 hours on that system.

More recently, our validated Ada 83 compilers took 4-6 hours to recompile on
386/25 class machines. Running the ACVC (ACATS now) took more than 12 hours.
But the Ada 95 compiler (which is quite a bit larger) only takes 20-30
minutes to compile on my current system, and the ACATS takes less than 3
hours to run.

At those speeds, full recompiles aren't so daunting. You no longer schedule
your entire development around adding a component to the symbol table
definition.

It's true that Ada 95 helps in that it can decrease coupling. But the real
help has simply been faster hardware.

                       Randy.