ghc configure

[C.M.Brown]

Hi Simon,

> Mainly this is due to modularity: many of the library packages can be built
> entirely separately from GHC, so their configure scripts are designed to be
> standalone.
>

Yes, I guess it would be a fair bit of work to have it check that you are
building the whole of GHC as opposed to separate modules. I just thought
that it could check to see if it was a global build -- and share configure
checks where appropriate; or, in separate module builds the configure runs
as normally.

> I know that configure takes a long time on Windows, but I'm surprised if it's a
> bottleneck for other platforms.  How long does the build take?  Have you taken
> steps to speed up the build as described in the Building Guide?

Configuring and building on my Mac can take several hours. Mind you, it's
a slow machine (G4 1.33 with 1 gig of RAM). I can safely say it's very
fast on my linux machine - the configure whips through, and even a full
build only takes a little more than an hour or so.

Thanks for pointing out tips to speed up the build. I must confess my
ignorance of not checking that!

Kind regards,
Chris.