[ccache] Why not cache link commands?
Andrew Stubbs
ams at codesourcery.com
Tue Sep 18 06:44:29 MDT 2012
Hi all, again,
I've just posted about improving compile speed by caching compiler
failures, and in the same vein I'd like to consider caching
called-for-link compile tasks.
This is partly interesting for the many small autoconf tests, but is
also increasingly interesting for real compilations, now that
whole-program-optimization and link-time-optimization is more available
in GCC. Even without all this link-time compilation activity, there are
some link operations that simply take forever, mostly due to large file
sizes.
Clearly there are some technical challenges in doing this: we'd have to
hash all the object files and libraries (a la direct mode), but those
problems are surmountable, I think. The linker does not use any
libraries not listed with "gcc '-###' whatever".
I'm also aware that it's not that interesting for many incremental
builds, where the final link will always be different, but my use case
is accelerating rebuilds of projects that my have many outputs, most of
which are likely to be unaffected by small code changes. It's also worth
noting that incremental builds are not the target use case for ccache in
general.
So, again, before I waste my time implementing this feature, are there
any other fundamental gotchas that would prevent it ever working or ever
being useful?
Has anybody else ever tried to do this? Is anybody trying to do it now?
Thanks
Andrew
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