Why C++ compiles slowly

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 08/19/2010 07:48 AM, Eldar Insafutdinov wrote:
>> I'll be doing a followup on why D compiles fast.
>
> I will say the contrary. Compiling medium size projects doesn't matter in either
> language. But when the size of your project starts getting very big you will have
> troubles in D because there is no incremental compilation.

I'm a bit confused - how do you define incremental compilation? The 
build system can be easily set up to compile individual D files to 
object files, and the use the linker in a traditional manner.

> You will end up
> recompiling the whole thing each time which will take longer than just recompiling
> a single file in C++. Please be sure to mention it in your next article, otherwise
> it is a false advertisement. Of course it is not the language issue, but it's the
> issue of its only implementation.
>
> P.S. This problem was raised many times here by Tomasz Stachowiak.

I'm not sure about that. On the large C++ systems I work on, compilation 
is absolute agony. I don't think that that sets the bar too high.


Andrei