Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Feeping Creaturism
Message-ID: <722@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 88 18:40:52 GMT
References: <655@nuchat.UUCP> <657@sandino.quintus.UUCP> <367@sas.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 21
Summary: Make does not an incremental compiler make

In article <367@sas.UUCP>, bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes:
> [it has been suggested that incremental compiles share information
> so only the changes stuff need be re-compiled]
> 
> I do this all the time on Unix and other non-integrated environments.
> It's called  *make*.

Make is a good thing.  Much better than not having it.  But it does not
make an incremental compiler out of an ordinary compiler.  Why?  Several
reasons.  Firstly, you'd have to keep each procedure in a separate file.
This is impractical (for reasons I've presented before).  And even if
you do this, you find that you have to fire up your compiler and read in
all your includes once for each procedure.  This is a lot of overhead
for a 10 line procedure (and 200 lines of includes!). And finally, when
you're all done compiling your 3 or 4 changed files, you have to link
everything FROM SCRATCH.  This is not insignificant.  In fact it could
well be the dominant factor in the time it takes you from finish of
editing to start of debugging.
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds