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Re: "make check" times


On 7/19/19 6:11 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
While digging for some low-hanging fruit in "make" times, I did this:

diff --git a/scripts/merge-test-results.sh b/scripts/merge-test-results.sh
index 919bbae253..7088ef6996 100755
--- a/scripts/merge-test-results.sh
+++ b/scripts/merge-test-results.sh
@@ -35,7 +35,11 @@ case $type in
      subdir=${subdir:+$subdir/}
      for t in "$@"; do
        if [ -s "$objpfx$t.test-result" ]; then
-	head -n1 "$objpfx$t.test-result"
+	  #head -n1 "$objpfx$t.test-result"
+	  exec 6<"$objpfx$t.test-result"
+	  read line <&6
+	  echo $line
+	  exec 6<&-
        else
  	echo "UNRESOLVED: $subdir$t"
        fi

That one instance of "head" is called over 6000 times per "make
check", and as it's the only non-builtin in that script, it adds about
11 seconds of overhead compared to just reading that one line with
builtins.

My question here is: how much of a time savings is worth the
complexity of said savings?

One needs to tackle the problem the other way around.

* First determine those things we cannot change and remove them
  form the accounting.
  - We cannot avoid compiling each file.

* Whatever is left over after removing the things we can't
  avoid doing is our "overhead".

* Sort the "overhead" by the amount of time spent, and find ways
  to reduce it.

If the "overhead" is small, then there isn't much value in adding
complexity.

If the "overhead" is large, we may want to rewrite the whole build
system to get that time back.

Does that make sense?

I can't answer your question without knowing how much is 11 seconds
out of the total time taken.

If the build took 20 seconds to complete, then yes this is a valuable
change ;-)

--
Cheers,
Carlos.


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