Re: Parallelization of shell scripts for 'configure' etc.

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 13, 2022, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> In many Gnu projects, the 'configure' script is the biggest barrier to
> building because it takes soooo long to run. Is there some way that we
> could improve its performance without completely reengineering it, by
> improving Bash so that it can parallelize 'configure' scripts?

I don't know what counts as "completely reengineering it", but I gather
we could get quite a long way by introducing "parallelizable regions",
with explicitly named shell variables and other properties (say config.h
matter) as inputs and outputs (plus enabling macros to add to inputs and
outputs), and having autoconf generate a configure script, script
fragments for the regions, and a Makefile with the dependencies inferred
from explicit and implicit inputs and outputs.  The configure script
would then attempt to run make, or run the fragments serially.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker                https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
   Free Software Activist                       GNU Toolchain Engineer
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