On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 16:40 -0700, Zack Weinberg wrote: > Daniel Berlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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.
People would complain even if the compiler took 1 second on every file, regardless of size or optimization level. If you want a faster compiler, it's hard work. It means not adding features because the design isn't a good one, *even if the user would still find it useful*. People aren't willing to do this. It means lots and lots of profiling, and taking care of little inefficiencies. All I ever see people suggest is magic bullets. We also have some deep datastructure problems in terms of IL, but those aren't going to give us a 5000% speedup or be a magic bullet either. --Dan
