> Let's see, are headers relatively short? Are they lots of little
> files? Does that mean accessing headers is dominated by disk seeks.
> What's one of the slowest operations on your system? Moving the disk
> heads.
In most common source sets, after compiling the first few files, virtually
all of the commonly used headers are cached by the OS, so most of the
compile time is going to be CPU bound. A good way to see the bottleneck is
to compile with "-pipe", which stops all of the intermediate file creation
dreck (which accounts for most of the disk trashing during gcc compiles).
"top" should in most cases reveal that the CPU is very busy.
Due to lack of iostat on Linux, this is a little difficult to measure
objectively, but the next time you're doing a large compile on a non-linux
system using gcc, use "-pipe" and check system activity with iostat and top.
Nick
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
