Re: PCH support

[Miles Bader]

2011/12/26 Olaf van der Spek <address@hidden>:
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Miles Bader <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 2011/12/26 Olaf van der Spek <address@hidden>:
>>>> Faster enough to be worth the annoyance for the developer of twisting
>>>> his source code to fit the "pch style" (which seems notably uglier)?
>>>
>>> Yes
>>> I'm not sure what twisting you're referring too though.
>>
>> Another comment noted that PCH was often ineffective or even
>> counter-productive unless the bulk of your includes are precisely the
>> same between compilation units, and that in practice systems like VS
>> try to get the user to define a single "include everything" header
>> file (presumably instead of the normal practice of "include the stuff
>> you use").
>>
>> Sounds pretty darn ugly (and I expect makes compile times far worse if
>> you _can't_ use PCH in some case)...
>
> Is someone forcing you to use PCH? I'm not sure what your point is.

Er, of course not (where on earth did that come from)?

My initial question was essentially "is PCH still a good idea for the
average developer?"

That basically involves examining the details of the tradeoff between
benefits (increased compile speed; how much?) and drawbacks (awkward
constraints on source style / organization; exactly what is needed to
make PCH effective?).

This is relevant to automake because the general utility of
specialized PCH support in automake has to be weighed against the cost
of that support (of course, maybe it's super trivial, I dunno).

-miles

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