Re: How to cache output of the compiler aka ccache

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org> writes:

> Hehe... C had separate compilation, but no dependency management.  To
> overcome this limitation, Makefiles were created, but they were not
> portable enough.  To overcome this limitation, configure scripts were
> created.  At first simple, they had to take into account the
> idiosyncrasies of more and more host and target platforms and became
> unwieldy and fragile.  To overcome this limitation, autoconf was
> created, but it still cannot possibly know everything about every host
> and target platform.  To overcome this limitation, automake was
> created.
> 
> Now, autoconf and automake work hand in hand, each using a mix of
> several cryptic languages.  They have become so fiendlishly difficult
> to maintain that few people if any at all understand how they work.
> To overcome this limitation, ...
> 
> Verily this is not the Tao of Programming :)

The strange thing is, it wouldn't be all that hard for a C compiler
vendor to provide a tool for building C programs that would be just as
reliable about maintaining consistency as an ada builder -- without
having to type a bazillion (usually wrong) dependences into a make file.
Seems a lot easier to deal with than automatically-generated make files.

- Bob