Software Build Systems: Principles and Experience

Chapter 19. Faster Builds

This final chapter considers how a build system can get its job done faster. It should be no surprise that a large program takes a long time to compile. However, you have many ways to speed up the end-to-end build process and reduce the time spent on incremental rebuilds. Even if you break your software into multiple components, you want each component to compile as quickly as possible. Beyond simply suggesting that you buy a faster build machine (which is often a good idea), this chapter covers four main topics:

• Measuring build system performance: The first step in deciding how to speed up the build process is to analyze the various steps the build tool takes. When you’ve located the bottleneck, the approach to improving ...