Michael S (already5chosen@yahoo.com) on 6/29/10 wrote:
---------------------------
>Richard Cownie (tich@pobox.com) on 6/28/10 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>Linus Torvalds (torvalds@linux-foundation.org) on 6/28/10 wrote:
>>---------------------------
>>
>>>Agreed. However, long compiles are often a huge drain on
>>>developer time. Fast turn-around time from making a change
>>>to having compiled it and done targeted tests on it can
>>>be a huge deal in being a happy developer.
>>
>>I agree: that time should be less than half an hour,
>>otherwise people end up doing unnecessary task-switching
>>which costs productivity. And I'm sufficiently keen on
>>that fast turnaround that I've put a lot of effort into
>>the build system, dependency management, and distributed
>>build tools to make it happen.
>>
>
>Oh, no.
>Compile time should be at most 2min for people of our generation and preferably no more than 20-30s for young folks.


Kids these days... I remember when it took longer than a couple of minutes for the card reader to read your program - and never mind the half day it took to get your compile back... We also had to walk to school in winter, barefoot, through waist deep snow, uphill (both ways!), and when we got home, we had to eat dirt. And we were happy to have it! ;-)

But seriously, while build times that short are certainly nice, often the test part of the cycle at that point is much longer.