Re: Speedy compilers

Amit Patel <amitp@theory.stanford.edu> wrote:


> Joachim Durchholz <joachim.durchholz@munich.netsurf.de> writes:
>
> > The lesson still applies, but there is no fast C++ compiler on Windows
> > (not because C++ is slow but because these compilers all include
> > megabytes of Windows header files by default). I think a compiler
> > that uses precompilation in a sensible manner will blow the socks off
> > all existing C++ compilers. ...
>
> IBM's Visual Age C++ 4.0 compiler is supposed to solve this problem by
> treating each function (rather than each 1000 lines) separately, and
> then maintaining a dependency graph to tell it how to recompile when a
> change is made.


There is a very interesting thesis by Regis Crelier on this topic,
titled "Separate Compilation and Module Extension". Mr. Crelier presents


      "... two new models for fine-grained consistency checking and their
implementation. These models allow the interface of separately compiled
modules to be extended without requiring a recompilation of client
modules."


The implementation in the thesis is targeted to the Oberon language. I
think that most modern Oberon systems and compilers (at least those from
ETHZ) use the described techniques. A gzipped Postscript copy of the
thesis is available at
<ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch//pub/publications/dissertations/th10650.ps.gz>


Regards
Sebastiano Pilla

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