Re: Speeding up config.status

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

Tom> Lately I've been thinking about speeding up config.status,
Tom> especially as regards automake.

I might be wrong, but I don't think today this is really needed: 2.50
has a much faster config.status.

Fileutils 4.0, Autoconf 2.12, 19 AC_OUTPUT

Fileutils 4.1, Autoconf 2.49e, 25 AC_OUTPUT


Tom> For automake it would be better if config.status simply created a
Tom> file with all the substitutions, like so: "FOO = @FOO@".  

All but srcdir etc.

Tom> I know config.status is faster in 2.5x.  But this would make
Tom> things faster still, at least for projects with more than one
Tom> directory that use automake.

I don't think the current speed is actually a bottle neck, but I
understand your thinking.

About config.status, I was thinking about something else: couldn't it
provide some --timestamping support?  I don't know too well how it
works, I only have a vague idea, but it seems to me that Makefiles
could be a lot simpler if there were a mechanism to tell config.status
``behave à la move-if-change, but update this timestamp file each time
you decided not to update the file''.

Something like

        ./config.status --timestamp=stamp-h config.h