GHC compile times (was Re: GHC 6.4.3 is stalled)

[Malcolm Wallace]

Joel Reymont <joelr1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the tip! I'm _really_ interested in why it takes 55 min on 
> Linux and 3+ hours on Mac Intel, though. Any clues?

Another thought.  The ghc HACKING guide has this to say:

    The GHC build tree is set up so that, by default, it builds a
    compiler ready for installing and using.  That means full
    optimisation, and the build can take a *long* time.  If you unpack
    your source tree and right away say "./configure; make", expect to
    have to wait a while.

    For hacking, you want the build to be quick - quick to build in the
    first place, and quick to rebuild after making changes.  Tuning your
    build setup can make the difference between several hours to build
    GHC, and less than an hour.  Here's how to do it.

http://cvs.haskell.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/fptools/ghc/HACKING?content-type=text%2Fplain

Regards,
    Malcolm