Smart Recompilation

Clement Cheung quotes Tichy:
> "Smart
> recompilation is a method of reducing the set of modules that must be
                                      ^ Cheung misquoted this as "the"
> recompiled after a change. The method determines whether recompilation is
> necessary by isolating the differences among program modules and analyzing
> the effect of changes."


This is from the abstract of his TOSEM paper, in which he lays claim to
inventing the method.


For those who haven't read Tichy's work recently, I'd like to point out
his main contribution:
        Determining which modules in a system actually need to be
        compiled can be done in less time than it takes to do one
        compilation.
He achieves this by an approach that avoids the "big inhale" required for
real compilation. The algorithm scans a module under the assumption that
all unbound identifiers have "reasonable" declarations elsewhere.


I claim that the term "Smart Recompilation" should be reserved for Tichy's
method and methods based on it, with a key ingredient being avoiding the
"big inhale".


Bob Schwanke


rws@cadillac.siemens.com


Siemens Corporate Research, Inc.
755 College Rd. East
Princeton, NJ 08540


(609) 734-6546, Fax -6565
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