A week without compile.

I think the four-hour thing is for a FULL rebuild. If you just want to test a sun-flare you would just have to re-compile one file and relink the whole thing.

I suppose it could take that long to recompile the whole thing. It wouldnt normally take that long though, because most likely there are parts you already have compiled and haven''t beeen changed.

I''d assume that there''d be parts that be already compiled, But how does testing go about for the code a person is working on? Is it in little test apps?

~Wave

That''s BS!
Maybe on old machines, or crappy compilers. My game (both the client and server together) take like 5 minutes to rebuild, at most.
And this is on an Athlon 750, 256 RAM, using gcc.

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Maybe it has to do with all the source files being shuffled over the network to the compiling machine or something? Or, then again, Warcraft 3 might be 36 times larger than Raduprv''s game, making it take about 3 hours

Yeah, I test all of my modules in little test apps, or some testing framework. I might just test out one class or test out a couple of classes interacting with each other to make sure things work. You know that if it doesn''t work in the simple test cases, it won''t work in the main program. I''m no professional, that''s just how I do things.

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Original post by Raduprv
That''s BS!
Maybe on old machines, or crappy compilers. My game (both the client and server together) take like 5 minutes to rebuild, at most.
And this is on an Athlon 750, 256 RAM, using gcc.

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Yeah, back when I was working with the Half-Life SDK, it took less than 1 or 2 minutes to rebuild the whole thing.

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Original post by Tron3k
Maybe it has to do with all the source files being shuffled over the network to the compiling machine or something? Or, then again, Warcraft 3 might be 36 times larger than Raduprv''s game, making it take about 3 hours

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I think that might be the case because I remember reading Black and White taking 3-4 hours.

~Wave

Well, I use C, not C++, so it's normal to compile faster.
But, still, my server alone is 657 KB of code...

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[edited by - Raduprv on September 4, 2003 11:55:01 PM]

Full rebuilds are usually done at night (so you better make sure anything you change will compile and link before you go so that the rebuild doesn''t choke because of a change in one small source). The idea is to try and make everything as data driven as possible, stick what you can in data files so you don''t have to rebuild (usually constants and initial values). Also, facilities that let you edit values while the code is running are helpful (Quake consoles). For testing code obviously you only recompile the immediate source and relink. Even then most companies have their tried and tested code in libs to take advantage of the fact that they''re not altered too often.

------------
- outRider -

I could see that kind of slow compile times if you were building from scratch each time and you were compiling off of a network drive, but in every development cycle I have worked on the code is split up into clearly defined modules. Each module is completed one step at a time, and you only need to recompile a module if you have to change something later on.

Try building an OS from sources if you want to see a real work out for a compiler. I always feel like I am working the dark arts when I update my source tree and recompile the kernel in FreeBSD Especially when I play around with -O3. Haven''t had many issues this time around.

Raduprv: does that build time apply when you rebuild all sources?

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Original post by ChaoticCanuck
Raduprv: does that build time apply when you rebuild all sources?

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Yep, I do a "Rebuild All" in DevCpp which deletes all the project .o files first.
And it''s less than 5 minutes, with debugging info on. Without it, it''s even faster.

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quote:

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Original post by Raduprv
That''s BS!
Maybe on old machines, or crappy compilers. My game (both the client and server together) take like 5 minutes to rebuild, at most.
And this is on an Athlon 750, 256 RAM, using gcc.

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OMG, I don''t know what I should say to that. Anyway, how much time it takes to build depends on the size of your program. My brother, who is working on SQL server at microsoft, has to wait 9 hours for a build to complete using a dedicated build lab, not your Athlon 750. And I''ll admit that I''m not sure of this one, but Visual C++.NET probably builds faster than GCC does.

Hopefully most of your code changes won''t be made to a header file that is used in every CPP, because that''s when it will take hours to build (if your project is really big).

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Original post by Raduprv
My game (both the client and server together) take like 5 minutes to rebuild, at most.
And this is on an Athlon 750, 256 RAM, using gcc.

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This is probably due to the fact that your game didn''t run in an excess of 200,000 lines of code.

Let''s put it like this:
MySQL, Apache, and PHP are all very complex programs, with many lines of code.
Yet they compile relatively fast, less than half an hour together, and that on a K62 350 MHZ.
So, maybe, VCC is teh sukc.

Height Map Editor | Eternal Lands | Fast User Directory

The architecture I''ve developed for our Hyperpipe engine uses a system of core and high level plugins that run on top of the main executable..

Most products we develop can be completely created in a high level dll that runs everything else, so even a final build for a delivery can be done in just a few minutes..

We generally try to abstract all new functionality into low level dlls that can be used for other purposes, and once these are built, they never have to be re-compiled unless a change is actually required..

All interfaces between dlls are designed to be backwards compatible, so when there is a change to any one sub-system, none of the other ones have to be altered..

Unit tests on individual plugins can be done pretty easily, alot of the time I''ll write an intermediate "driver" plugin to test new stuff as it is created..

Doing a complete rebuild of all components of any of our products would most likely take a few hours, but fortunately we''ve never had to do it that way..

"Like all good things, it starts with a monkey.."

It depends on a few things. If you keep another PC near you for thisa purpose, it works well. And, if you write code that works well, it shouldn''t take long. IMHO, it doesn''t really matter. If you have a second computer, like I do, nothing is bad. But on old machines it hurts. For example, on my 180MHz laptop with 24MB RAM.

Scott Simontis
e-mail:ageofscott@comcast.net
AIM:ssimontis

The way your headers are handled influence compile times a lot too. I remember reading a book written by the lead programmer of Age of Empire I and he mentionned that a full build took a very long time (can''t remember how long) and that consolidating the header cut down compile time tremendously.

Well full rebuilds it really depends on what machine and how many lines of code, for about 850,000 lines and a 1.0ghz machine it takes about 45 to 90 minutes. Now with Incredbuild that time is about 3-5 minutes. For people who don''t know, Incredibuild uses available systems on a LAN for compiling power. It r0x!