Parallel --make (GHC build times on newer MacBook Pros?)

[Thomas Schilling]

On 1 September 2011 08:44, Evan Laforge <qdunkan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes, the plan was to eventually have a parallel --make mode.
>
> If that's the goal, wouldn't it be easier to start many ghcs?

Yes.  With Scion I'm in the process of moving away from using GHC's
compilation manager (i.e., --make) towards a multi-process setup.
This has a number of advantages:

  - Less memory usage.  Loading lots of modules (e.g., GHC itself) can
take up to 1G of memory.  There are also a number of caches that can
only be flushed by restarting the session.

  - Sidestep a few bugs in the compilation manager, such as
non-flushable instance caches which lead to spurious instance
overlaps.  (Sorry, can't find the corresponding ticket, right now.)

  - An external compilation manager (e.g., Shake) can also handle
preprocessing of other extensions, such as .y, .chs, etc.

  - Support for different static flags (e.g., -prof).  Static flags
should eventually be removed from GHC, but it's low-priority and
difficult to do.

  - Uniform handling of compilation with multiple versions of GHC.

  - Parallel building, as you mentioned.

There may be more.  It also comes with disadvantages, such as the need
to serialise more data, but I think it's worth it.

This is the main reason why I stopped working on a thread-safe GHC.
Personally, I believe the GHC API should just include a simple API for
compiling a single module and return some binary value (i.e., don't
automatically write things to a file).  Everything else, including
GHCi, should be separate.

But that's a different matter...

-- 
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.