Thread: Modifying the GNU GCC 2.95 compiler

Hi guys !
As part of a task at my uni I would have to modify given parts of the gnu gcc compiler. My problem is that it takes 8 minutes on my machine (p1200, 256m) to "make bootstrap" the whole compiler. I guess it makes many files which aren't necessary to compile each time. Unfortunately I've just started trying to understand the internal structure of gcc 2.95, so I have no idea which files could be left out of the makefile. Obviously it is impossible to debug any code I write into the compiler this way (1:writing, 2:waiting 8 minutes, 3:trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, 4:goto 1) I wrote a letter to the gnu guys some days ago, because I figured that while they are writing the gcc, they use some kind of a special compiling method so that it takes seconds to have it finished. But I suppose they can't answer every letter they get, at least haven't answered until now. Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Originally posted by -=SoKrA=-
make will only tell gcc to compile the files that have been modified. The only way it could be faster is by not doing a make clean, but it you're already just compiling the changed source, I can't think of any way it could be sped up.

If you have another computer that has cycles to spare, you could use distcc to speed it up a bit, although it may actually be slower, depending on your particular case.

Thank you, the problem was I always did "make bootstrap" instead of "make".... For some reason I thought it wouldn't do the linking... I can do stupid stuff, but now I've outdone myself.