Comment by js4ever
13 hours ago
This makes absolutely no sense to me. Are you really recompiling 6000 things each time a dev in the company needs to add a line somewhere in the codebase? Have you thought about splitting that giant thing in smaller chunks?
> Are you really recompiling 6000 things each time a dev in the company needs to add a line somewhere in the codebase?
It happens when someone modifies a widely included header file. Which there are a lot of thanks to our use of templates. And this is just our small team of 300 people.
> Have you thought about splitting that giant thing in smaller chunks?
Yes. We've tried but it's not scaling. Unfortunately, we've banned tactics like pImpl and dynamic linking that would split a codebase unless they're profiled not to be on a hot path. Speed is important because I'm writing tests for a semiconductor fab and test time is more expensive than any other kind of factory on Earth.
I tried stuff like precompiled headers but the fact only one can be used per compilation job meant it didn't scale to our codebase.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown. The template header cascade problem makes total sense, I underestimated how bad it gets at scale with heavy template usage. The semiconductor fab constraint is interesting too. When test time costs that much per minute, banning pImpl on hot paths is a pretty obvious call, even if it makes compile times painful. Appreciate the real-world context.