Re: Semantic error recovery

bill@amber.csd.harris.com (Bill Leonard) writes:
      If you have hundreds of source files, it can take a long time for each
      "compilation", because make has to check to see which of those hundreds of
      source files need recompilation.


geoff@flash.bellcore.com (Geoffrey Clemm) writes:
> If you are encountering this problem, you might want to consider switching
> from "make" to "odin" (found in pub/Odin/odin.tar.Z from bellcore.com -
> 192.4.13.90). When used with an editor like emacs, Odin accepts notifications
> about files being changed, and only looks at those files when building.


We did look into using odin, but rejected it for two reasons:


    1. It is not compatible with make input files. Though make is not the
          greatest, it is widely available and LOTS of sofware is distributed
          with makefiles. Furthermore, almost every Unix programmer knows how
          to write at least a rudimentary make file. Retraining programmers and
          converting make files is not an efficient use of resources.


    2. The documentation was nearly impenetrable. I got the impression that
          writing (and reading) odin files was extremely complicated -- worse
          even than the most complicated make file! Perhaps my impression was
          mistaken, but the documentation helped me to that conclusion.


          Had the documentation been easier to read, and if odin files were much
          simpler than make files to write and maintain, that would obviate some
          of the objection in #1 above. But replacing make with an equally (or
          more) complicated tool is no great gain.


One of the main reasons we looked into odin in the first place was that it
allegedly supported "parallel builds". I could not find anything in the
documentation to describe such support, let alone how to use it.


--
Bill Leonard
Harris Computer Systems Division
2101 W. Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309
bill@ssd.csd.harris.com
--

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