LLVM IR influence on compiler debugging

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 7/7/12 11:26 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 19:33:22 -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>
>> On 7/7/12 8:29 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
>>> Sure they complain, but they would complain harder if the generated code
>>> was sub-optimal or had bugs in it. And I imagine that multiple hour
>>> build times are more the exception than rule even in C++, my
>>> understanding is that all 50mloc of Windows can compile overnight using
>>> distributed compiling. Essentially, my argument is that for business
>>> compilation time is something that can be attacked with money, where
>>> code generation and perf bugs are not.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but I think you got that precisely backwards.
>>
>> Andrei
>
> Why is that?

Compilation is a huge bottleneck for any major C++ code base, and adding 
hardware (distributing compilation etc) is survival, but definitely 
doesn't scale to make the problem negligible.

In contrast, programmers have considerable control about generating fast 
code.


Andrei