Re: upgrading from Automake 1.4

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Joakim Tjernlund wrote on Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 02:23:17PM CEST:
> 
> Moving from automake 1.4 to 1.10.1 I notice a big increase in runtime
> for automake.  previously with 1.4 I got around 30 seconds, not I get
> 3 minutes and 45 seconds.  is this normal? Can it be reduced somehow?

Good question.  I'm afraid to say that, not knowing any better, neither
remembering efforts to speed up automake, it is probably "normal".

We have looked at speeding up parts of Autoconf and Libtool before, but
neglected Automake, for my part mostly out of laziness: the other two
had quite a few rather low-hanging fruits to pick.

That said, I have measured at one time that for one large package with
lots of Automake conditionals and many makefiles (OpenMPI), I am aware
that automake spends a lot of time in the code that deals with the
conditionals.  It hasn't bothered me enough yet to look in more detail,
though.

Since your code could be exhibiting a different hot spot, and since your
code provides a unique chance to compare 1.4 and 1.10 performance rather
easily, would you be so kind and make available the 1.4- and the
1.10-using versions of your package for testing automake performance?
I can't promise when I get to it, but it seems worth a look.

Thanks,
Ralf