On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 07:19:03 UTC, Patrick Schluter wrote:
version 2.067 that still had the C++ frontend took more than 100 seconds. I think if the backend is translated to D, building the compiler will take not more than 2 seconds.
Using ccache solves the (tiny) problem as the backend hardly every changes. But even without ccache `make -C src -f posix.mak ../generated/linux/release/64/backend.a -j8` runs in about a second on my machine, hardly anything that needs optimization given that it's a solid codebase with little ongoing development. Also translating the C++ backend to D zero benefit to D users (at worst it introduces codegen bugs). I'm inclined to say we should rather spent our time on the various more important issues. It was a good move for the frontend as that will allow us to make use of D features to improve the code/architecture and to eventually turn it into a proper library. Converting the stable and well tested codebase of the backend, which will hardly receive any feature development, is unlikely to ever pay off.
