What is the compilation model of D?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, July 25, 2012 08:54:24 Russel Winder wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-07-24 at 20:35 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> […]
> 
> > I find it shocking that anyone would consider 15 seconds slow to compile
> > for a large program. Yes, D's builds are lightning fast in general, and
> > 15 seconds is probably a longer build, but calling 15 seconds
> > "slow-to-compile" just about blows my mind. 15 seconds for a large
> > program is _fast_. If anyone complains about a large program taking 15
> > seconds to build, then they're just plain spoiled or naive. I've dealt
> > with _Java_ apps which took in the realm of 10 minutes to compile, let
> > alone C++ apps which take _hours_ to compile. 15 seconds is a godsend.
> 
> A company I did some Python training for (they used Python for their
> integration and system testing, and a bit of unit testing) back in 2006
> had a C++ product whose "from scratch" build time genuinely was 56
> hours.

I've heard of overnight builds, and I've heard of _regression tests_ running 
for over a week, but I've never heard of builds being over 2 days. Ouch.

It has got to have been possible to have a shorter build than that. Of course, 
if their code was bad enough that the build was that long, it may have been 
rather disgusting code to clean up. But then again, maybe they genuinely had a 
legitimate reason for having the build take that long. I'd be very surprised 
though.

In any case, much as I like C++ (not as much as D, but I still like it quite a 
bit), its build times are undeniably horrible.

- Jonathan M Davis