Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?

[Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org>]

On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 16:40 -0700, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 15:13 -0700, Stan Shebs wrote:
> >> Steven Bosscher wrote:
> >> >If someone had cared about them, it would have been noticed
> >> >earlier.  But since _nobody_ has complained before you, I guess we
> >> >can conclude that by far the majority if GCC users are quite happy
> >> >with the cost assesments that were made.
> >> >
> >> No, there have been plenty of complaints, but the GCC mailing lists
> >> have, shall we say, a "reputation", and a great many users will not
> >> post to them,
> >
> > I've never in my life heard this from another mailing list, and i
> > contribute to a *great* many open source projects.
> 
> I have seen such complaints.  Not about bootstrap times, no, that only
> affects people who compile the compiler; but the more general case of
> 'gcc takes forever to compile this program' does appear on a regular
> basis.
> 
> I do also think that the amount of ridicule heaped on people who come
> to the gcc lists is, in general, too high.  People should not be
> ridiculed for complaining that the compiler is slow, even if they are
> insisting on using vintage hardware.  It is slow, even on fast
> hardware; it's just easier to see that on slow hardware.  

For people who use hardware most developers don't have access to, we
need preprocessed source and profiling data, or else there is no chance
of fixing it.  
It seems users of these platforms are not willing to provide this, even
when asked.  

Those people who have provided preprocessed source and profiling data
(8361, omniorb, etc) have had their compilation times sped up.
So whenever i hear that "we don't care about compilation time", i wonder
if the user has even put code in bugzilla that demonstrates the problem.
Most often, the answer is no, AFAICT.

--Dan