D slower than C++ in compile time

[Burton Radons]

Frank Benoit Wrote:

> Gregor once explained why build tools need to call DMD once per file:
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=57473
> 
> This makes dsss look like it is slow, but actually this is a concequence 
> of a DMD workaround.
> 
> For the DWT library this would lead to compile times >15 minutes!
> 
> In the past I found the compile times always a big argument for D. 
> Hopefully this point gets attention at digitalmars ;)

I don't understand from that link what the problem is. Is there any situation where if you pass a complete list of D files to DMD that it won't generate the correct code? Or is this isolated to situations where you're trying to incrementally compile, which has never worked all that great with DMD and will very quickly be slower than calling it with everything? All Gregor says is that it produces larger executables than strictly necessary which is a problem, sure, but a completely usable workaround and far from the show-stopping bugs that should be Walter's primary concern right now.

There may be a way to build a more intelligent linker that can produce tighter executables based on knowledge about how D works. I'll look into it, but I can't guarantee when.